Or ... a tough time getting into these D&D games and trying to like them, if it's really fast paced Action RPGs that float your boat. ;)

Or you just keep an open mind and learn to love the best of both worlds, while going easy on their respective flaws. I think it's possible to love both Torment and Diablo (or at least BG2 and Nox ;) ).

Icewind Dale II. I played it for the first time last year and loved it. It's a well-designed dungeon crawl. It's a real jewel of hack-and-slash RPGs, with enough story and world-building to keep it from being dull.

Icewind Dale is basically the same, only clunkier (and the story is a bit more interesting).

Planescape Torment is about diametrically opposed to a hack-and-slash or dungeon crawl experience. Great game, but not everyone's cup of tea.

I rage-quit both times I've tried to play Baldur's Gate from what I saw as the complete *lack* of respect for player choice. I'm sure it's a great game, and I may try it now that I know you can create a multi-player party (and that I can run it on Android), but not something I'd recommend if you've never played an Infinity Engine game before.

I have some D&D experience though (Eye of the Beholder, DDO) and I know the differences between Diablo like games and D&D based games. Damn it! I'm still stuck!

Just roll 1d4 to decide where to start. Refer to the list below for the choices:

1: Icewind Dale
2: Baldur's Gate
3: Planescape: Torment
4: None of the above. Choose a game randomly from the GOG catalogue.

Personally I always felt the IWD games were more traditional pen & paper RPGs - you create your group and you go in a quest. You choose your own companions which you also create from scratch, not find them along the way to piss you off with their romances or their fears and what not. It's just pure adventure and dungeon-crawling, with some especially tough battles (especially in IWD 2).

PST is more like - talk, talk, talk. No real gameplay (2 or 3 mandatory battles, the rest you can flee), a point & click 10-hour story which you may not understand completely if you have no idea about the Planescape lore. The first half of the game is unbelievably boring, taking place in about 20 screens altogether, until you leave the Hive, then the game takes off but for some people it may be too late.

As for BG is the more versatile and interesting of the 3. Very big games (for their own good), and you'll spend at least 100-150 hours on both of them.

If you can afford it, buy all of the games along with Neverwinter Nights in the next D&D sale - if you don't care about newer games, all of them will offer you at least 1 year of gaming.

PST is a game I want to love because of its amazingly unique story and setting as well as gameplay ideas like the portals which should be amazing. In the end though it doesn't have the gameplay, and as anyone smart can tell you gameplay is what makes a game. As blasphemous as some here would consider it I would love to see a new PST done as a 3D open-world action RPG with real exploration and combat.

Well, not really blasphemous; as much as I love the game, I sort of agree. The setting is great, and a Planescape open-world RPG could be very interesting indeed. But it wouldn't really be a new "PST", but a new "PS".

I still think the game's name is actually "Torment".

You're not wrong, but at this point Planescape is the marketing identifier should they ever make another.

I also agree that the Planescape setting wasn't explored enough - I think Torment is the only game on it, with some cameo appearances from certain creatures and tribes in other D&D games (like BG2). Yes, another Planescape RPG would make sense.

One reason I like Icewind Dale is that it feel like a continuation of the SSI Gold Box games and I absolutely love them. :)

You might not though since it's a bit up to personal taste if you see any Gold Box in Icewind Dale.

Problem is, AFAIK WoTC declared the Planescape setting to be dead, like Spelljammer and some of the others.

Get Divine Divinity, one of the most refreshing isometric games I have ever played, it will save you from having to choose between the others :)

Edit for link

http://www.gog.com/gamecard/divine_divinity

Have you ruled out Neverwinter Nights because it's not "top-down"? If you zoom out, the perspective is not that different from games like Diablo. Yeah, still 3D but I'd hesitate to call it a 3D game. It's a little more Action oriented and generally easier than the Infinity games (although that also depends on the difficulty settings and the modules you play). The official campaign is loved by some, hated by others, but the good thing is, there are tons of free adventures for it and they include adaptations of classic dungeon crawl modules from the Pen-an-Paper D&D. So if you get to like the engine, you're bound to find something that suits your taste, even if you think the official campaign is too boring.

Of the others, if you don't want to put up with the reading in PST, like I said, I'd probably recommend IWD2. It's got the most refined engine and GUI and is a decent dungeon crawler.

Wow... Now I'm stuck between Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment, and Neverwinter nights. The way you say it make NWN sound so awesome!

NWN has its downsides, too (not so pretty default graphics, not so interesting official campaign, pretty bad default monster and henchmen AI ...), but yeah, it can be pretty awesome if it's your cup of tea. I doubt you'd find another game with such a good value-for-money ratio, all because of the dedicated community and 10 years of creativity. You can spend years playing it and still discover new things, or you can just find yourself a couple of very short modules to play in order not to distract you too much from Diablo 3.

I never knew there was a demo for it, but someone linked to it recently in another thread, so you could check it out and see if you like it before making any decision:

http://www.fileplanet.com/117661/110000/fileinfo/Neverwinter-Nights-Demo