ARPG Nostalgia

Now that 3.0 has brought in some D3 players, the influx of Diablo talk, terms, and slang has sparked some ARPG memories for me. Anyone else want to ride that trip down memory lane?

Remember these ARPGs? Some sleepers, some well known titles...

Diablo: Hellfire (1997)



Everyone reading this knows Diablo, there is no doubt about that. But not everyone knows of this sleeper expansion made by Sierra for Diablo. I have no clue how they finagled the license for this, but it was a commercial product, and I bought it back in 98. You could play its new monk class, and even toggle running in town (moving in town was painfully slow in the original Diablo).



Darkstone (1999)



It's now on Steam, but back at its launch it was released on a CD by a French developer/publisher.

There is no original page for Darkstone on English version of Wikipedia, as they all redirect to their remake Darkstone: Evil Reigns, from 2014. However you can always Google translate the French version of the Wikipedia page on Darkstone. An ARPG with a true 3D engine in 1999, that's quite a feat.



Divine Divinity (2002)



Another sleeper, this time from a Belgian developer. Divine Divinity, with a rather redundant title, wasn't memorable for most. It was a solid ARPG, fun to play, and then that was it. They made a sequel that was just as much a sleeper as the original. Then they created a entirely new game with half of the old title that was much more popular (Divinity II).



Dungeon Siege (2002)



Just like Diablo and Torchlight, most people here should have heard of Dungeon Siege. But unlike other ARPGs at the time, Dungeon Siege touted a seamless world with no loading screens. That was quite a feat in 2002, and it took a developer like Gas Powered Games to pull it off. It was so popular, they made a second and even third in the series, not to mention a PSP version and even a movie with name included. Of course the movie was a flop, but so are many movies based on games.



Titan Quest (2006)



It had all of the makings of a great ARPG, and revitalized this genre, but it didn't necessarily innovate anywhere. It had an expansions pack released, but the developer closed up shop after being unable to secure funding for any future releases for Titan Quest. However, the engine from Titan Quest was bought/licensed for Grim Dawn. Still, Titan Quest was absolutely beautiful. I remember running it on a triple-monitor system at the time (3840x1024) and it was quite a site to behold.


There are many, many ARPGs I didn't list. I just mentioned the ones that stood out in my memory. What are your ARPG memories?

Dunno if I'd count DivDiv among action RPGs, it's a full fledged isometric open world RPG with a lot of quests with multiple way to resolve and a great sense of humor.

However, Nox, that's what you're missing here, worth playing just to experience the unusual controls and resource MANAgement, but it has a lot more to offer.

I played TQ as well as DS but not the others. Hell, I never even heard of Hellfire until years later. I loved both but it has been years I do remember some irritating quests in DS.

Sacred. That funny-looking Seraphim had a spell called BFG, it left no build choices to me.

got the demo of diablo1 on a cereal box (remember when companies put product demos on packages?).
played d2 and LOD for many years (since 1.07 I think).
always wanted hellfire but could never find it, guess it was never released around here :(

I think TQ looks much better than a lot of modern games do, including poe. It's so pretty, and seamless transitions (no loading screens). everything is clean and crisp, not just MORE GRIT IT MAKES IT GOOD. except the cursor, it's nearly invisible.

Some day I'll return to Divinity and finish it. Got a bug in main quest where you need to bring some 5 or 6 items to different people, and one of them didn't want to take it therefore stalling the main quest. Tried everything, even editing inventory through savefile editing, but nothing helped :/

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鬼殺し wrote:

Nox had the best lightning spell in any Arpg at the time. It was so awesome.

still have a copy of NoX laying around lol