2017
Maybe my favorite imsim. Taking what is essentially a dungeon crawler genre (FPS RPG, aka "immersive sims") and synthesizing it with Metroid is a stroke of genius, and I adore basically everything about this game. How it looks, how it plays, how it sounds, the plot, the twists, everything. I recommend it to everyone forever.
2019
Patient Zero for the plague of "rogue-like deckbuilders", but for a reason: it's really fucking good. Looks great and plays clever, and the vast differences between each character are really cool to learn. I'm tired of the genre it inadvertently spawned, but I shouldn't hold it against this game.
Lovely puzzle game about building ships out of constituent parts for finicky clients. Adjacency and size are extremely important to building out good ships. Dialogue started cringe but grew on me, and I like the furry designs. UI needed a little extra polish. While I did like the music, I wish there was more than one track.
2023
Adding simple positioning mechanics to a deskbuilder was a stroke of genius, and what can I say, I'm a sucker for adorable furries and goofy dialogue. Would put it up there with Slay The Spire as one of the "canon" deckbuilder games everyone with interest in the genre should play.
1998
An early example of reactivity as an important quality for RPGs, but significantly weaker than the first game. The "Vault Experiment" revelation doesn't make any sense (glad the show retconned this, honestly) and it's overstuffed with meta-humor and wink-nods. Still good though.
1997
It's Fallout. It's literally one of the best isometric RPGs ever made, and the best in the franchise by a country mile. Gorgeous, evocative, timeless. It's been TWENTY SEVEN YEARS since I played it for the first time and it still completely blows me away every time I play it.
Greater Zion is really pretty and I like the tug and pull between the Burned Man and Daniel. Really short, though, to the point that it feels a little unfinished.
2018
Yeah yeah, I like this one. I came to it after they realized trying to make a survival-crafter game out of Fallout was really stupid and reworked it into a real RPG (complete with NPCs!) and super enjoyed it. Removing the settlement busywork in favor of making you the sole focus of your crafting efforts was a much-needed change in design, and it's a fun co-op ARPG. Definitely flawed, but at this point in time, charmingly so.
2010
On an engine that doesn't have a famously-bad character controller and a penchant for inexplicable crashes, this would be a flawless game. Instead it's just extremely good. Wonderful and reactive story, a well-realized world, builds upon the mythos with care and insight, and just plain fun! Ugly as piss but you do the best with what you got.
Give Josh Sawyer infinite money and a talented team please. The man deserves to not have every triumphantly good RPG he directs be ruined by corporate meddling.
Give Josh Sawyer infinite money and a talented team please. The man deserves to not have every triumphantly good RPG he directs be ruined by corporate meddling.
2008
Bad but at least it's still an RPG with noticeably RPG-type features, like having to set up character builds, multiple directions for various quests, and some cool setpieces. Good lord is it painfully ugly though, and the console-ized interface would be a portent of Bethesda's dogshit UI design to come.
2015
Complete dogshit, absolutely the worst of the franchise, painfully unfinished.
Having to scoop up hundreds of useless junk items to feed into a settlement system that is quarter-baked at best? All XP gains nerfed to force you into leveling through settlements? The endless level grind instead of directed character builds? The painfully stupid story with characters you hate and a plot that makes no sense?
Just about every single part of this game could be and has been done better by the other 3D Fallouts. Fallout 76 (I know, I know) nailed the building and scavenging aspect by divorcing it from the underdone settlement management system, and New Vegas is the vastly superior RPG in just about every other way that matters. To make Fallout 4 works requires a boatload of mods and zero self-respect.
I do have to begrudgingly give it kudos for finally making a character controller that doesn't feel like complete shit, and changing how power armor works away from being just "the best armor" and into something with weight and feeling
Playing this game is knowing you're stuck on the hamster wheel, hating it, and continuing anyway.
Having to scoop up hundreds of useless junk items to feed into a settlement system that is quarter-baked at best? All XP gains nerfed to force you into leveling through settlements? The endless level grind instead of directed character builds? The painfully stupid story with characters you hate and a plot that makes no sense?
Just about every single part of this game could be and has been done better by the other 3D Fallouts. Fallout 76 (I know, I know) nailed the building and scavenging aspect by divorcing it from the underdone settlement management system, and New Vegas is the vastly superior RPG in just about every other way that matters. To make Fallout 4 works requires a boatload of mods and zero self-respect.
I do have to begrudgingly give it kudos for finally making a character controller that doesn't feel like complete shit, and changing how power armor works away from being just "the best armor" and into something with weight and feeling
Playing this game is knowing you're stuck on the hamster wheel, hating it, and continuing anyway.
1996
The greatest hack-and-slash game ever made, and absolutely the best Diablo title. A near-perfect rogue-like distilled into a grimdark vision for the masses. Much, much slower than its sequels, but also more open, more mysterious, and more obtuse in all the best ways. It's also, mercifully, not an endless meat grinder. Relatively short and a great co-op experience.
Undoubtedly one of the most influential games ever made, and arguably the originator of the "endless co-op" genre that would later consume everybody's life with the rise of the Service Game. In a list of "top 10 most historically important games", this would sit somewhere in the middle.
It's also probably the worst Diablo game. I'm very nostalgic for it, and there's a lot that's good about it, but there's so many vestigial appendages (like Stamina, the potion belt, and binding abilities to your function keys) that aged like shit. There's a charm to that, though, and I still have a deep and abiding love for this game despite hindsight constantly showing me its flaws.
Definitely worth playing if you've never done so. But if you want an endless grinder to mulch through enemies in, 3 or 4 are better suited for your needs.
It's also probably the worst Diablo game. I'm very nostalgic for it, and there's a lot that's good about it, but there's so many vestigial appendages (like Stamina, the potion belt, and binding abilities to your function keys) that aged like shit. There's a charm to that, though, and I still have a deep and abiding love for this game despite hindsight constantly showing me its flaws.
Definitely worth playing if you've never done so. But if you want an endless grinder to mulch through enemies in, 3 or 4 are better suited for your needs.
2012
Altar of Rites literally fixed every problem this game's itemization system had. It may not have the investment building of its peers (no skill points here!) and a more fantasy-than-dark atmosphere, but I think it's sort of like a platonic solid for the ARPG genre. Simple, direct, easy to understand. Mow down hundreds of thousands of mobs for currency and loot and buildcraft your way to absurd power, with minimal friction. It's a virtue and a flaw for sure, but it's probably the second best Diablo (after 1)
2023
It's hard to really recommend Diablo 4 to people because it sought to "return to the dark fantasy of the first two games" as a reactionary response to Diablo 3, but... Diablo 3 is good! It looks good and with the Altar of Rites they've fixed basically all the problems I had with the game's itemization economy! It's probably a better entry point for the series!
And now Diablo 4 has to go through the same growing pains because we are cursed as an industry to forget the lessons of the past in favor of constantly chasing an imagined ideal which is fundamentally unattainable. Oh well!
The open world is a big plus, as well as bringing back dungeons and giving you items to make them harder in favor of better rewards. I'm glad they tried something relatively new with how a game like this is structured.. Diablo 4 understood one of Destiny's core points: that it's cool to randomly team up with people in the wilderness to do public events. More ARPGs should try this, but they'd have to invest in the complicated networking infrastructure to do so, and that's something I think only the big boys can feasibly do.
Anyway, I like this game and I think it's pretty good, but if you want a fully mature loot grinder experience, Diablo 3 (if you wanna focus on buildmaxxing / grinding) or Grim Dawn (if you want the grim aesthetic and a more "investment" type build experience) will probably do you better.
My barbarian build where I apply huge bleed stacks to an enemy and then shove my polearm into their guts and kill them instantly is VERY satisfying.
And now Diablo 4 has to go through the same growing pains because we are cursed as an industry to forget the lessons of the past in favor of constantly chasing an imagined ideal which is fundamentally unattainable. Oh well!
The open world is a big plus, as well as bringing back dungeons and giving you items to make them harder in favor of better rewards. I'm glad they tried something relatively new with how a game like this is structured.. Diablo 4 understood one of Destiny's core points: that it's cool to randomly team up with people in the wilderness to do public events. More ARPGs should try this, but they'd have to invest in the complicated networking infrastructure to do so, and that's something I think only the big boys can feasibly do.
Anyway, I like this game and I think it's pretty good, but if you want a fully mature loot grinder experience, Diablo 3 (if you wanna focus on buildmaxxing / grinding) or Grim Dawn (if you want the grim aesthetic and a more "investment" type build experience) will probably do you better.
My barbarian build where I apply huge bleed stacks to an enemy and then shove my polearm into their guts and kill them instantly is VERY satisfying.