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I've recently played Diablo 1 and 2 and I'm totally hooked. Now I've been wondering what genre this game belongs to, so it would help me find similar games.

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3  
"Unforgettable Classics" would be my take. :) – user9296 May 5 '11 at 6:47
"Its own" is another – Sean Apr 22 '12 at 4:15

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up vote 31 down vote accepted

The genre has a few popular names, including:

  • Hack and slash
  • Action RPG
  • Dungeon crawl
  • Diablo-like or Diablo-esque

And sometimes even the term "roguelike" is used - there is a vast difference between the roguelike genre and games like Diablo, but the latter are obviously influenced by the former.

The most common term I've encountered is "hack and slash". There are many, many games that belong to this genre, especially since the success of Diablo.

The excellent Moby Games site has a page about the genre, which briefly outlines what defines it as well as providing a list of all the games it considers to be "Diablo variants".

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+1 going to play now... – Josefvz May 4 '11 at 7:08
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@Raven the only thing I can there which is unique to Torchlight (and its predecessor, Fate) is fishing and using the fish for modifying your pet. – Oak♦ May 4 '11 at 7:57
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And yet I consider the original Diablo to be a graphical clone of ularn cordier.com/ularn/index.html. – ohmantics May 4 '11 at 7:58
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Whoa, that article is totally Torchlight biased. – Jeff Mercado May 4 '11 at 8:58
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I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the original Diablo was designed as a Roguelike (which means turn-based), then one of the designers suggested making it run real-time. It ended up awesome and led to further changes that turned Diablo into what it is today. It still isn't a roguelike, of course, but just some trivia. I'll see if I can find that article again... – Grace Note♦ May 4 '11 at 11:36
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