What has been your "next Diablo"?

[LemmingofGlory]

To me, what sets Diablo 1 apart was the tactical gameplay of the tile-based system. Diablo II and Diablo III are more action-oriented, which makes for more frenetic gameplay, but loses some of what we loved with the original. This is a natural evolution based on what game developers found people enjoyed the most: action and random loot drops. The more, the merrier. A much smaller segment could say that they really enjoyed positioning a huge group of enemy Blood Knights into a chokepoint where they could take them down one at a time. Diablo 1 is a slower game, where each monster is individually more threatening to your character than the other two games. That adds a lot of atmosphere right there.

Without having a tile-based system, "Demon's Souls"/"Dark Souls" manages to require the player to adopt a cautious approach to combat that reminds me of D1. I was shocked to see it pulled off, honestly. I'm mildly curious to see if D3 pulls off anything interesting in the gameplay department or if it'll just be D2 all over again (which is what it looks like to me).

So far, I've not been incredibly impressed by D3 from promotional items. I found a D3 book at the store entitled "Book of Cain". It was a collection of letters from Cain to some character I'm unfamiliar with, and each one was signed, "Love, Uncle Deckard." I was revolted. I can't see Deckard "Forever Alone" Cain's dehydrated ass ever uttering something so mushy. The bits of D3's story I've heard have really left me feeling Blizzard is more than a bit uninspired these days.

I just realized I'm not sure if I'm more disappointed in Diablo 2 or Dragon Age 2.

-Lem