Action RPGs

I'll be the first to admit that over the years my taste in games has somewhat devolved. As I have run out of time in my day to dedicate to gaming I have found the quick fix of Action RPGs to be the perfect mix of theorycraft and time investment. Granted, all Action RPGs beginn as a low time demand, high reward, and end in soul crushing grinds... which is probably why my fandom in ARPGs tends to focus on the first play through, and how easy or hard character advancement is. Original release Diablo III was a great game on first play through, and then you realized that the subsequent play throughs required such specific sets of stats on specific items that advancement was nearly impossible.

Anyway, this has been my experience with all of my favorite ARPGs of the last few years. So I decided that if there is any others here who also loves the fast faced mass destruction followed by color coded loot and near-actuarial-style number balancing inherent in Action RPG min-maxing we can discuss the good ones here. Gems you have found that maybe don't get a lot of press, as well as big name titles that might have finally fixed themselves after a disastrous launch.

My favorite recent ARPGs are **:

1) Diablo 3. I hit the grind wall on this about 6 months ago and have not found it to have gotten any better in the mean time. That said, it did eat up a lot of my time, and I maxed level well before I hit the wall.

2) Path of Exile. I hit a wall with this game well before level cap, but it still gave me a lot of good, productive, fun time. I think the Ascendancy trials probably ruined the fun for me. Maybe I am just old and reactions aren't what they used to be, but trials that involve an hours of rogue-like trap puzzles in order to advance your class spec is entirely un-fun. But it is second on the list of hours played.

3) Grim Dawn. I hit the wall in this game fairly recently, and there is a huge content patch coming out this summer so I am not willing to call it yet. It has been the most fun ARPG experience for me in the last year.. granted, #1 and #2 were well advanced towards the grind in that same time frame, but I believe when all is said and done Grim Dawn will take the #2 spot, and possibly #1.

4) The Division. I find I am getting tired of swords and spells and this game hits all the right notes on min-maxing and constant advancement... and color coded loot, but is masquerading as a very good third person modern day shooter with some sci-fi elements. I'll have to double check, but I think hours played in this game would put it in 4th. I am still planning on going back to this game when the next content patch is released so it isn't as dead to me as Diablo 3, and I'll definitely return to it faster than POE... so it my not stay at #4

5) Torchlight 2. As much as I would like for this to rank higher I just got bored with it. I think it suffered from the shortage of distinct, repeatable, Boss fights... there is something to be said for crossing through a door, having it close behind you, and squaring off with a boss followed by the shower of color coded loot.... I didn't get enough of that in this game.

6) Van Helsing. I give this game an A for effort, and I got a lot of fun out of it. I mean, it has all of the elements that should have rocketed it to #2 or #3... but Grim Dawn, which is Van Helsing's spiritual twin, just did it better, I think, and I simply stopped playing this game well before the grind only because when I sat down with time to play I fired up Grim Dawn.

** - Based on time played, since I tend to stop playing on the brink of the start of crippling grinds... so if I played for a while it means I was getting meaningful enjoyment and returns on time invested the whole time. These games weren't necessarily released last year, but I purchased them last year and invested significant time in playing them.

When I come across games in this genre that meet my personal criteria for a good ARPG I will post them here and I invite fellow ARPG fans to do the same. I have an interesting one I have started playing in the last few days that will be the topic of my next post.

A little older but

Dragons Age was good, DA 3 Inquisition did not have the character building options the first one did

Witcher(sp) 3 I never played but heard great things about

The only two on your list I have played are Diablo and PoE. The gameplay for both is similar and it's kind of nice to be able to play a game for half an hour, back away for a few days or weeks and then jump back in with no real sense that you missed anything.

The one game I'd recommend that isn't on the list is Elder Scrolls Online. It's not exactly like the others and does require some quest progression but you can play it as an ARPG if you just stick to certain tasks.

My latest ARPG that ate all of my game time this weekend is a nice, no frills indie game:

Pixel Privateers

This game is just fun. It certainly can't be accused of being overly complicated in either the combat mechanics OR the graphics... but what it offers is a very deceptively complex character system where you create a team of up to 6 (?) squad mates made up of your choice of a number of classes, which are changeable on a character by character basis based on what class specific tool they carry. The classes all boil down to Tank, DPS, healer and Support types but how each class gets it's job done varies wildly.. some healers do mass big heals, some smaller heals continuously, takes can be melee of ranged, and so on.

Combat: Pretty simple. Most of the primary jobs of your squad is automated. Attacking an enemy simply requires a single click to designate it and the team will attack it until the enemy is dead. Healers primary heals are automated as well. Each class and character have special abilities that you need to manually toggle, like tanks have a self heal in a pinch, engineers can deploy turrets, etc. Most of the time you will find yourself just clicking through groups of enemies in you min-max the characters properly since most mobs will not out DPS you and your healers will quickly bring everyone up to full health soon after each combat.

Some boss enemies can throw a twist at you since most support abilities have limited range, and you can't pass through enemies, so bosses will often try to capitalize on your team if you spread out to minimize AOE effects by leaping into the middle of your ranks, separating your tank from your healer, for example.

Graphics: As the name suggestes, the game is done in an 8 bit art style with limited animation but lots of pretty explosions and effects... I'd equate the visuals to a more 8bit version of Terraria with your squat little squad appearing to be 8bit Hummel figurines. There is really no reason for me to explain it when I can just link you to pictures.

Metagame: The game is an open ended narrative that gives you big lifts that you have to work your way up to being able to finish by flying from planet to planet completely mini-quests that play out a lot like the quests in the tablet game FALLOUT SHELTER, only with more hands on control. So your job is to do random and specific missions on planets to earn money to improve your ship, research technology, and craft equipment.

One of the most interesting parts of the game is your ships replication ability. You know how most games try to weed out item duplication hacks? Not this game. You have a function on board ship that allows you to duplicate any item that drops for you in the game. Find a great assault rifle that your scouts could all use? No bother. Just duplicate it. Granted, the higher quality the item the harder it is to duplicate... but you can upgrade your ship to improve your chances. Each attempt consumes "matter", one of the 4 primary resources in the game (money, fuel, matter, research), and if you fail the matter is lost... so really good equipment might eat a lot of matter to get a successful duplicate. But you can refill your matter stores by disintegrating unneeded equipment and crew.

Loot: The loot is amazingly plentiful in this game, at least in the early stages, so every mission in the hours I have played so far has yielded at least one piece of useful gear. The color coding is:

Gray: junk equipment
Green: good quality
Blue: high end
Purple: Epic
Red: Legendary

I don't think you can replicate legendary gear without a specific ship upgrade.

Most gear is universally equip-able, with the only limiter being the item level and the player's max carry weight. This way most characters will end up falling into one of the various classes permanently as their skills benefit from different states (Strength, Agility, Speed, Intelligence)... so a class based on Strength will be the most flexible in what gear it can use you wouldn't necessarily want to equip Intelligence driven equipment on a meat head.

Anyway, it is senseless fun and is currently $15.00 on Steam. Enjoy!

Lutherf said:

The only two on your list I have played are Diablo and PoE. The gameplay for both is similar and it's kind of nice to be able to play a game for half an hour, back away for a few days or weeks and then jump back in with no real sense that you missed anything.

The one game I'd recommend that isn't on the list is Elder Scrolls Online. It's not exactly like the others and does require some quest progression but you can play it as an ARPG if you just stick to certain tasks.

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I've played ESO until about level 30, I think, but it was towards the end of my universal MMO burn out. It wasn't ESO's fault though.

All of the stand alone Elder Scrolls and first person Fallout games from Bethesda kind of fall into this category, too... not sure where Fallout 4 would fall on this list, though. I don't have access to my Steam stats. It might be #2 if I included it.

I'm currently doing a dragon age run through. I'm on origins, almost done, will go to 2, and then find a copy of inquisition. Haven't played inquisition, but the first 2 are solid. Origins is DnD as ****, and I love it, while 2 is more hack and slash actiony.

The mass effect series is also amazing.

Going back a decade or so....a PS2 game that was awesome and under rated...Drakan : The Ancients Gates. Fantastic game.

jmotivator said:

My favorite recent ARPGs are **:

1) Diablo 3. I hit the grind wall on this about 6 months ago and have not found it to have gotten any better in the mean time. That said, it did eat up a lot of my time, and I maxed level well before I hit the wall.

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I play Diablo III now and then.


The most effort I put in was perhaps during Season 6 or something. Got to solo GR 70. But it just doesn't hold my attention for any length of time (not that I have that much time to pour into games anyway). Once you've chased GRift levels enough times, there is no novelty left. Diminishing returns ensures that the rate at which your character improves is slower after each improvement and because it's not a subscription game, there is no regular new additions of game-expanding content. Just tweaks here and there. Meanwhile, the sets are so overpowered that you're handicapping yourself if you do not use one (and there's usually one clear best set per season), along with the specific items that further boost that particular set. The items you wear end up defining the skills you use and your playstyle, which results in a rather limited set of options - unless you literally do not care about advancement as a player and just want to screw around.

(There is supposedly a $15 DLC release coming that adds a new class, but whatever. The game itself will remain fundamentally the same).

Mr Person said:

I play Diablo III now and then.


The most effort I put in was perhaps during Season 6 or something. Got to solo GR 70. But it just doesn't hold my attention for any length of time (not that I have that much time to pour into games anyway). Once you've chased GRift levels enough times, there is no novelty left. Diminishing returns ensures that the rate at which your character improves is slower after each improvement and because it's not a subscription game, there is no regular new additions of game-expanding content. Just tweaks here and there. Meanwhile, the sets are so overpowered that you're handicapping yourself if you do not use one (and there's usually one clear best set per season), along with the specific items that further boost that particular set. The items you wear end up defining the skills you use and your playstyle, which results in a rather limited set of options - unless you literally do not care about advancement as a player and just want to screw around.

(There is supposedly a $15 DLC release coming that adds a new class, but whatever. The game itself will remain fundamentally the same).

Click to expand...

That is pretty much my position. I am not one of those people who seeks to earn all of the achievements and level every class to max level (though I may have one of each in Diablo 3?), so the idea of running the Diablo 3 story AGAIN three times is not much on an enticement to me.

Pixel Privateers scratches all the ARPG itches for me right now even though I know that out there in the future somewhere there is a grind wall I am racing towards at high speed.

The Borderlands series throws all of those under the bus.

My buddy and I wasted HUNDREDS of hours side-by-side (a rare treat with current games) with each game. If you haven't played any of them, stop...slap yourself...and pick up all three (best to play in order).

Interesting to me, I ran the numbers and it turns out I have played a lot more of The Division than I thought.

I don't have numbers for Diablo 3, but I still think it is #1 followed by

#2 The Division
#3 Grim Dawn
#4 Elder Scrolls Online
#5 Path of Exile
#6 Fallout 4
#7 Borderlands
#8 Borderlands 2

Interestingly, After the first 4 slots I have discovered a pattern.... I appear to have about 80 hours forth of interest in all the games from #5 to #8

Granted, all of these are likely dwarfed by my time in WOW.

jmotivator said:

I'll be the first to admit that over the years my taste in games has somewhat devolved. As I have run out of time in my day to dedicate to gaming I have found the quick fix of Action RPGs to be the perfect mix of theorycraft and time investment. Granted, all Action RPGs beginn as a low time demand, high reward, and end in soul crushing grinds... which is probably why my fandom in ARPGs tends to focus on the first play through, and how easy or hard character advancement is. Original release Diablo III was a great game on first play through, and then you realized that the subsequent play throughs required such specific sets of stats on specific items that advancement was nearly impossible.

Anyway, this has been my experience with all of my favorite ARPGs of the last few years. So I decided that if there is any others here who also loves the fast faced mass destruction followed by color coded loot and near-actuarial-style number balancing inherent in Action RPG min-maxing we can discuss the good ones here. Gems you have found that maybe don't get a lot of press, as well as big name titles that might have finally fixed themselves after a disastrous launch.

.

Click to expand...

I only played the first two, diablo 3 had major problems at launch, but then it got better, then way worse. It was at the point walmart in my area had diablo 3 in the bargain bin pile.

Path of exile is still incomplete, it is quite fun and very customizable like diablo 2 was, but that game has a massive grind to it even from the start. This is an arpg meant for harcore gamers.

Diablo 2 was the holy grail of arpg games, it is still going, but numbers keep dropping after over 15 years and nearly no new content since 2003. It was the casual and hardcore gamers game, but now on us east and west, after a certain time no games are going expect in private, and ladder which resets every 6 months is the only thing semi populated.

Never played grim dawn, but I heard it was supposed to be good, and know it was made out of how terrible diablo 3 was, and funded by arpg fans disgruntled at blizzard and other companies who refused to fill their needs.

Torchlight is made by the creators of diablo and diablo 2, the main crators that is, much of the rest of the original team got shifted in blizzard or left and joined arenasoft to help make guild wars. Never played it but heard it has the tune of diablo 2's polishedness, but in a steampunk setting rather than medeival.

beerftw said:

I only played the first two, diablo 3 had major problems at launch, but then it got better, then way worse. It was at the point walmart in my area had diablo 3 in the bargain bin pile.

Path of exile is still incomplete, it is quite fun and very customizable like diablo 2 was, but that game has a massive grind to it even from the start. This is an arpg meant for harcore gamers.

Diablo 2 was the holy grail of arpg games, it is still going, but numbers keep dropping after over 15 years and nearly no new content since 2003. It was the casual and hardcore gamers game, but now on us east and west, after a certain time no games are going expect in private, and ladder which resets every 6 months is the only thing semi populated.

Never played grim dawn, but I heard it was supposed to be good, and know it was made out of how terrible diablo 3 was, and funded by arpg fans disgruntled at blizzard and other companies who refused to fill their needs.

Torchlight is made by the creators of diablo and diablo 2, the main crators that is, much of the rest of the original team got shifted in blizzard or left and joined arenasoft to help make guild wars. Never played it but heard it has the tune of diablo 2's polishedness, but in a steampunk setting rather than medeival.

Click to expand...

The closest I have come to Diablo 2 is Grim Dawn. Torchlight was more of a polished, steampunky Diablo 1 clone. Torchlight two had a lot that was commendable, but for some reason it went flat pretty quickly with me.

So I learned yesterday that PIXEL PRIVATEERS is a sort of sequel to the game PIXEL PIRACY which is sort of similar, but you are in charge of a pirate ship. I think I actually like PIXEL PIRACY even more than PIXEL PRIVATEERS because the ship building is more involved and it appears that the game is bigger in most respects.

FREE:iPhone/tablet
A fun little app game star wars themed. I dig building a rebel team, a sith team, etc.
https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/galaxy-of-heroes

FREEC
A version of dungeons and Dragons. 3.5 I think.
https://www.ddo.com/en


PAYC Skyrim rocks whatever path you take.
https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/skyrim/

FREEC Scifi lasers and whatnot.
Anarchy Online | Funcom

I like all these right now. On and off I play age of conan, dc universe, marvel 2017 all free PC games.

I miss city of heroes.