I saw this game mentioned on RPGcodex as the best action RPG you could get these days, so I was wondering if anyone here has played it.
Judging by the screenshots it looks a bit rough, but what I'm wondering is how is it gameplay wise.
How does it compare to Diablo, Torchlight, Titan Quest and such games?

Try the Demo

RPGCodex?

RPGCODEX???????

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

There's always Duck and Cover, and of course, The Den.

Unless of Course you are HERE

Well yes, but you can dig up some very interesting things out of all that crap ;-)

I'll also add that I picked it up along with the Demon War expansion and can vouch for it being a really good game.

It's along the lines of Torchlight with 3D graphics and more focused on dropping lower and lower in a dungeon like the first Diablo.

You're sort of funding every one in town, above the dungeon entrance, to make the town better. There are constant dynamic changes taking place so you'll never be able to complete all side missions at once (because you may already be on one when a rare on is being offered back in town) but this makes the game highly re-playable.

Best thing about the game though is that each and every new game is randomly generated and centered around options you select at the start of a game.

It's similar to roguelikes in that all the dungeons surrounding the town you're supposed to save are randomly generated as are the various quests. Quests have a habit of being really, really urgent all the time. There is no "I'll get to that later la la la" here. You have to finish the quest(s) you're on in order to prevent the town from getting overrun or bad things happening to the quest NPC.

Graphics-wise it IS a little rough but at least the gameplay more than makes up for it.

It IS a good game.
As Carnival mentioned before, the main feature of the game is randomness; however, this randomness affects both the town you need to save (how many inhabitants there are, what types of vendors are available, etc.) AND the dungeon, along with random modifiers affecting gameplay in one way or another.
The characters are also interesting, they are composed of three skill trees each, and you can also make a hybrid of any two sub-sets of skills.
Not-really-state-of-the-art graphics aside, the bggest problem I've found in the game is the ridiculous jumps in difficulty; when you reach a new difficulty level, it is quite probable your preiously powerful, tough character gets annihilated in a matter of minutes, repeatedly. Even in the same difficulty, you may notice the game is much harder than it was before if you go a level or two higher. However, one can get accustomed to it and adapt tactics as necessary.

All in all, I say it's a very enjoyable game, but you'd indeed better start with the demo.

Actually, I kind of love RPG Codex. Kind of.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, I'm also quite interested in this game. GamersGate had the expansion on sale last week, but a fat load of good that did us. If anyone spots a deal, please update this thread - I'll be sure to do the same.

Here's hoping for GG, as they are the only place that accepts my rubbish Irish debit card.

I forgot to mention that your actions (or lack of thereof) quite frequently DO have an effect on the town/dungeon; for example, if you don't destroy an evil gate quickly, it may spawn a boss monster on some level, which builds some machine if you don't stop him, etc. This is a good, cool thing at first, but can make the game rather hectic when, say, you should stop someone on level 8 of the dungeon before he/she builds a weather machine, and you've just arrived to level 3.

I played the demo, wasn't too impressed.

The dynamic world is nice, but it looks like there's no story or anything, just "finish randomly generated dungeon/town and go on to the next one".

Thanks on all the info, been playing the demo now for the last 30 minutes and while it does look interesting it's a bit too random for me.
Babysitting the whole town/starving people seems like a chore.

I also know now why it is popular at the codex, being a roguelike.

Better than Diablo in some ways, but falling short in others. Specifically, its biggest selling point is the dynamic pace of the game as a result of choices and consequences. Its second selling point is the number of class combinations you can have. The downside is that the skills sets and itemization are less polished and balanced than Diablo 2.

It's leap years ahead of Torchlight, which I got bored of after a while.

Never played Titan Quest so I can't compare to it.

I grew bored of ARPGs after Diablo 1 (but I still love Roguelikes). Din's Curse and Depths of Peril are the only recent ARPGs that I actually enjoy (well there's Twitcher 1 too but whether it classifies as an ARPG is contentious)
Yeah it's not really the type of game where you grow sentimental to the NPCs and town, but I like it for its surprises. I don't recall a game where I actually laughed really hard at dying. Multiplayer is also quite epic when everything falls in place. One time, a bud and I were exploring the dungeons when suddenly I fell through a trap. I was low on health and out of pots, so I had to wait for him to bail me out. As he slashed his way down, the town was suddenly under attack. We quickly hightailed it back to town, and pushed the invaders back, but lost a few important NPCs. It was really cool.

All the Soldak games are interesting variations on the Diablo theme. They're a lot more immersive if you can suspend disbelief at all the instant messaging that abstracts the dynamic events. I liked Depths of Peril more because of the larger scale, the changing terrain, and the faction raids, but on the other hand it's often possible to get bogged down in a single dungeon while events spiral out of control. Din's Curse is better at keeping quests winnable, if you don't wander aimlessly for hours.

Lots of rough edges, unforgiving, but fun for the quest interaction and unpredictability.