Torchlight 2

*shrug*

Maybe it's different for you, but intentionally playing less optimally doesn't make a game more fun for me.

And yes, 1 playthrough on Hard and only a couple of maps (before I realized what a complete reuse of content it was) doesn't give you the levels to really trick out the character. Yet, if you've spent 80% of your current playthrough simply owning everything with 1 active and 1 passive; where's the promise that the next 3 playthroughs won't simply play the same way? That tricking out the character serves no purpose?

Edit: I also fully admit that I play these games for the content, and thus they rarely get more than a single playthrough out of me. Sure the new spells and power combinations are new content, but for me that doesn't out-weight slogging through all the same levels and fighting all the same bosses again and again. I'm not their primary demographic, and I'm ok with that.

For me an action rpg character usually starts out with "hey I think these skills are cool and would work well together so I'll roll a char and try that out". So yea you might be playing less optimally in that case but making the best of it. I think restriction breeds creativity in this case and I find that more fun, simply playing the most OP build the game offers and shunning all others would kill any interest in the action rpg genre for me. Trying how you can make odd combinations work is where it's at. And well, you pretty much describe yourself as the opposite of that so one playthrough and discard it is the right move there. Nice to agree to disagree without ripping into each other, I'm not used to that from the mmorpg subforum =)

If you wanna scratch an ARPG itch check out marvelheroes. If you don't mind the setup (you play as comic book characters) the actual game play is pretty fun, and there is some neat loot.