Your First Top-Down ARPG

[dallasdeadeye]

is golden axe an rpg, also boulders gate.

[aileron]

If you mean Diablo-like, well then it was the original Diablo on a PC, and damn was it addictive. If you mean anything with a person with a sword, top down, not turn based, then original Gauntlet coin op in an arcade.

[judge_bergan]

Bad Blood (1990). An adventure to prevent a genocide in a post-apocalypse with scarce resources. It's a tile-based open world with three player characters with different arcs (the Human, the Mutant, and a Human-passable Mutant). Every time that I played, I discovered a new hidden area with rare loot, so have your pencil and paper out for some Subnautica-style hand mapping.

Watch out for the big beastie roaming the desert. It takes more than a few 'nades to take it down.

[BlackBoots]

Do Knightlore and Alien8 count?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Lore
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_8

[The Crazed One]

My very first Diablo-clone/Isometric hack-n-slash would have to be Champions of Norrath on the PS2.

[0x00]

Original Legend of Zelda on the NES.

[Gluesponge]

The original Diablo... Because Gauntlet isn't really an RPG.

[JackofTears]

Diablo 1 pretty much defined the isometric arpg genre, while there were some which could qualify before that, Diablo was the first real masterpiece that I can remember. Though I have played some very good titles in the genre over the years, the Diablo series embodies everything great about the style.

[Necromancerx69]

Diablo 2 With Lord of Destruction.

[aileron]

Some people are debating what counts as ARPG, what doesn't... Anyone remember Ultima VI? Top down real time combat that came out before Diablo but after Zelda.

[aileron]

Ultima VI really sticks out for me. It was such a huge leap over the turn based stuff from previous Ultimas and their clones. It's probably laughable today, but at the time combat was like, Ffff! This is happening so fast!

[literallyaghost]

Terranigma. An rpg where you make the world, I guess is the best description for it. It's a really epic game.
Or A link to the past, if that counts as an rpg. It's a zelda game, and that should describe most of what the game is about.

[Sorain]

Diablo. I swear I spent more time searching for all the lore books to know WTF was going on and hear that spine chilling narration over the creepy to this day background music then I really should have. It's old, clunky and primitive by modern standards, but it sold me on a more active RPG still being able to convey emotion. No one who heard those books to that music in a room filled with demon/skeleton/zombie/fallen corpses could fail to feel the chill. The voice work for the dying man outside the cathedral comes to mind immediately on thinking of it. The man slain by 'a demon he called The Butcher' begging you to kill it so their souls can finally rest. It stuck with me. It made Adria being revealed as working with the prime evils in D3 have some actual emotional impact despite being a very weird story decision. It made Marius's tale in Diablo 2 hold up despite the many hours between parts (and the epic framing device it is!) and gave me an emotional connection to the Sorcerer, Rogue and Warrior that made their fates all the more tragic.