I think you’re getting the wrong impression.

I absolutely like isometric ARPGs, I just like them exponentially more in theory. Most of them have barely innovated on Diablo 2’s core moment to moment loop and it’s something that seemingly everyone is aware of but no studio has yet to be able to fix. I’m looking for good combat, which was what PoE2 pitched in all of their videos, in most of their dev interviews (although as of late it feels like they’re pulling back on this), and has so far failed to deliver outside of the boss arena (and sometimes in the boss arena too).

I want:

• to be self-insert character or at least one of many characters as a form of self expression
• I want mechanical self expression ideally in the form of dozens or hundreds of skills and their customization along with a skill tree that enables further customization on how your character plays. My load out of 10 abilities should look and feel and play very differently than your load out of 10 abilities.
• I want to fight monsters and bosses that are varied, challenging, and uniquely rewarding ideally. Challenging and varied are putting in a lot of work in that sentence so I want to further expound and say combat should feel like a dance, a puzzle, high octane, and skill rewarding (not simply build skill or farming skill, but actual play skill).
• I want the pacing around playing to be focused on fighting and clearing encounters more so than exploration and discovery. Elden Ring is fantastic but it’s slow between clearing mobs and escalating the stakes/rewards - relying on the underlying exploration to be meaningful (and it is and it’s a 10/10 but not what I’m talking about in this post).
• I want an additional system of collectibles that further modify the way I play and look, most consistently this looks like loot or crafting (this however should not be primarily satisfied with #'s go up).
• I want to do this with friends in a multiplayer format, ideally at times requiring multiplayer because that opens up a lot of unused design space (looking at you remnant 2 which was awesome or only theoretically Diablo world bosses and black dungeon).

In theory this describes games like Diablo/LE/PoE as well as remnant 2/destiny/borderlands. But classic ARPG’s have so much of these needs theoretically covered that if they’d just tweak the moment to moment gameplay they’d have a perfect game for me. Where as games like Borderlands barely has a dozen skills in the entire game and they barely change how you play (coming from B3 and B4), the combat by the nature of being an fps is more engaging but it’s not much past that - it’s very repetitive and the number of mobs that are interesting or good is low imo. If each quality I’m looking for is scored 1-10 borderlands may have some of them but they score lower than most ARPGs. Remnant 2 was fantastic but it didn’t have the hundreds of hours of content and systems to do that wasn’t grinding story paths (I’d still rate this experience at 10/10). Hades and Enter the Gungeon and most roguelites have fantastic moment to moment gameplay but lack most of the other qualities I’m looking for. Wo Long and DS and all of those are fantastic games with good moment to moment gameplay but similarly lack multiple qualities I’m looking for.

I honestly think I want an open world Diablo where it’s designed more like a Gauntlet and DND-esque groups in mind, with better combat and better loot and more skills. I want exactly what PoE2 was promising and delivers in their campaign (by and large, some things would still need to improve to score highly in my desired qualities) but which they completely abandon in the mid-to-late game. I want something in between No Rest for the Wicked or Hades or Remnant 2 and PoE 2 or LE or Diablo. And listening to the developers in this space on various podcasts and dev interviews, they know that is what’s missing but seem unable to get there quite yet. I think PoE2, if it doesn’t fix combat, will be an innovation on PoE1 but will be remembered as PoE1.5 and lumped into the age of ARPGS that were still Diablo 2 successors or the age after of innovators instead of the next generation of ARPGs i think we’re on the cusp of.