Diablo question/dungeon crawler recomendations.

So I just got Diablo 1 and 2 and both expansions. To anyone out there who knows... should I start out running the expansions? Are they stand-alone campaigns, or if I start up the expansion.exes do I get access to the vanillas campaigns as well? I know that might be an incredibly stupid question, but I don't want to be five or six hours in before I find out I need to start over. I played Diablo 2 a long time ago but I never played Lord of Destruction.

In addition can someone recommend me some quality dungeon crawlers I haven't played? I'm really starting to get fascinated by these games. Games I have played include The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing and the Diablo and Torchlight series. Please skip things like Borderlands. I want something more pure to the genre. Isometric style perspective is a must, but I'm not above anything on consoles.

Titan Quest, and the expansion Immortal Throne is a must. That's the game that got me into playing Diablo.

I don't remember the expansion for Diablo I, but you should definitely play an expansion character on Diablo II. They rebalanced some stuff, added new classes, and added a new Act. It isn't a separate campaign; you just continue on to Act V after beating Act IV.

As far as other games: Titan Quest and Path of Exile are both heavily inspired by Diablo II.

Fallout

Um.....what's going on with this thread? The most recent post is apparently from @mb; there are no posts in the thread; but when I click on it, there are three(ish?) posts, and none of them from that one guy.

@video_game_king: IT'S A GHOST THREAD!

No, but seriously, I have a sneaking fear that no one reading this will have played Diablo 1. I don't know anyone personally who's played it... and I know a lot of gamers.

Yep, Path of Exile and Titant Quest should be played. Have you played Diablo 3, it's pretty good now that loot 2.0 is integrated and the expansion is great.

There's Grim Dawn on early access that is made by some of the team of Titan Quest I think. Haven't played it myself (waiting for it to be done) but it seems interesting enough.

Nope, sorry. You already have the best dungeon crawler out there.

@fear_the_booboo: Grim Dawn is something I haven't heard of. Looks pretty cool though, if a bit early-accessish. I might wait till it's %100 finished.

Yo, look at my Avatar. Yall think I haven't played me some Fallout? It's also not really a dungeon crawler

I totally played it at some time between 96 and 00. I remember the basics (Cain, Adria, Griswold, going downstairs in the church, Leoric, Butcher, etc.) but not much else. I also remember the time I was at a friend's house watching him play online and a random dude joined the game, dropped some ridiculous gear, and then killed himself.

Marvel Heroes is a pretty great dungeon crawler/diablo-esque action RPG. It's also free-to-play and not in a gross way which is pretty nice.

Titan Quest is excellent as mentioned. The first Diablo is interesting but very old so it depends on your mindset; ostensibly it's the hardest one to play on hardcore higher difficulties. Duping is extremely easy to do in D1 as well. I'm sure there's a lot of people who have played the first Diablo, else no one would know who the Butcher is.

the expansions are inline, they just add more to the end of the original game, so just use the expansion exe

Sweet, thanks man.

I mean Diablo 3 is an obvious answer I suppose. It got plenty of flak at first, but it's a wonderful game in its current state.

@ssully:

Edit: Hope that doesn't seem snotty, but c'mon duder. Read the OP, dawg.

They're a bit simpler but Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 1 and 2 are fun.

I heard Too Human is cheap and short. Does anyone think, given those two facts, Too Human might be worth a shot?

@slaps2: As far as I know Too Human is relatively lengthy.

I'll add that I've played a lot of Diablo 1 and I still like it a lot as a classic. Being the progenitor of a new genre, it's got a simplicity and purity to its systems and scope that I find charming. It's also some evocative atmosphere, due in large part to its great music. The expansion pack for Diablo 1, Hellfire, is pretty awful and mostly devoid of redeeming features. All of its content is not fun to play and of noticeably lower quality than the base game. I might go so far as to even recommend not using the expansion pack at all and just playing the base game on its own; the base game is all that most people played, remember, and might refer back to in regard to Diablo 1, and for good reason.

In the cases of both Diablo 1 and Diablo 2, if you start the game with the original (non-expansion) executable, you'll only be playing the base game content, whereas if you start the expansion's executable, you'll be playing with all content combined (expansion + base game). When you start up the game, you can easily tell whether you're running the base or expansion version by the title screen (does it display the name of the expansion pack or not?). Both games' expansion packs add new content throughout their campaigns, so if you're interested in using the pack (which you absolutely should for Diablo 2; for Diablo 1, it's debatable), start up the expansion pack from the outset and begin your new campaign there.

Heh, when the term "Dungeon Crawler" is used, I envision something in the vein of Wizardry or Etrian Odyssey (i.e. First Person Party-Based RPGs). Not that labels like this aren't esoteric and nonsensical anyways. I guess the original Diablo could be seen as a twist on that concept, so whatever.

Diablo Hellfire is generally seen as something that one plays after they've already messed with the base game a bit, given its semi-official nature and Blizzard disowning it from their canon. If we're talking about other games like that which are pretty good (or at least interesting), I'll throw in Path of Exile even if its brand of character progression isn't necessarily my cup of tea.

The first Dragon Age is a pretty good party-based RPG. Quite similar to Baldur's gate.

@slaps2: Fair enough. I couldn't see your avatar on my phone.

Grim dawn, while still in alpha is already a great game and will definitly be a great game when its comes out.

An Action RPG and a great dungeon crawler.

Its from the makers of titan quest.