Personally I liked Diablo 1 far more than Diablo 2.
For me it was the excitement of going down one dungeon, starting out fighting paltry skeletons and taking the fight right to Hell itself. A lot of long slow running around sections is just dull. The "overworld" feeling areas are never as fun as the actual dungeons, and Diablo 1 might have only lacked them due to the ease of making in door environs and sticking to the theme, but still it worked much better for me.
I do like that Path of Exile is less abilities-are-wholly-based-on-class (I hated that about Diablo 2 compared to 1, spells being universal with just one class skill each felt better) and more on the materia, but I dislike the randomness of the recoloring of materia slots, and some of the items just feel faffy..
BUT! I will say you cant judge this game harshly for its microtransactions. They're all niceities. They dont even skimp on the bank space. You have what... six bank tabs? That's insanely generous given they charge for more and each bank tab is huge. They could have given me one of those and I'd grumble but accept it. Compare that to how tiny the bank spaces feel in GW2, and they're amazingly generous. If you want to /dance you have to pay sure, but I paid for the popdance emote, so I cant judge that too bad...