I can't speak for the current state of the game but Destiny 2 was probably the absolute grindiest game I ever played. Cool powers and weapons. Lots of quests and stuff to get unique gear and weapons.

Path of Exile 2 season 3 comes out friday, perfect time to jump in !

Warframe

Helldivers 2

Warframe as said above, frames and weapons to farm and level up to get your mastery level up on top of an insane amount of content.

Division 2, tons of builds to experiment with and lots of things to grind towards

Borderlands series. Multiple characters to reach max level with and make busted builds. Then head into the endgame grind of OP or Mayhem levels

Diablo series, 4 more for a MMO like experience with some world spawns and events, 3 and 2 for solo grinding

Deep Rock Galactic, incredible co-op experience with lots of stuff to play towards. Rock and Stone!

Not necessarily a gear or leveling grind, but the modern Assassin Creed games (origins, Odyssey, etc) are great turn your mind of a check off all the PoI on the map. Trust me there is a butt load. Plus, all the games have great visuals.

Eh. While for a veteran of the ARPG genre, ND even then PoE is on another level, unless a new player wants to dedicate a lot of time to learning minutia, PoEis not going to be it for a new person.

The only unsatisfying part about it is unless you’re studying what constitutes a good crafting base, you’re probably just going to be grinding for currency. That said: jesus crust it feels good when you get the earblowing noise when a divine orb drops.

Yup and I personally recommend to start with mh World

Great game and a lot of fun, but I definitely wouldn't put it into a "grind" category like OP is asking for.

Imo it feels fun with leveling gear, just blasting through the acts feeling powerful lol. But i can also understand why some people find it a slog.

I need to go back to Remnant. I can't figure out how the class combinations and stuff is meant to work. I was doing fine but I didn't find much that revolutionised my build besides the archetype choice.

Warframe is exactly what u want.

There’s no rarity types in remnant though, still a great game for builds and such

Absolutely! Probably one of the better single player grinding kind of games out there. Because there's an incredible amount of depth in terms of mastering weapons and learning the different monsters. But I absolutely still reccomend if possible trying co op with buddies. Because it's so fun with friends too.

Monster Hunter is my go to grindy game

Black desert online is super grindy and fun.

Another for OSRS; I don't play it but my husband has been grinding for years 😂

I'd throw in Terraria.

Path of Exile,Good Luck

What about monster hunter world? The game is really about killing monsters and looting them to upgrade/ make new equipment.

Spiral Knights is a free MMORPG on Steam. It started out strong, but over time it fell to premium loot boxes, premium currency, and other pay to win negatives. It is possible to get through it without buying anything, but extremely grindy. I do like how you never actually upgrade your character, it's just your weapons and armor that change. Hope this helped!

AC Odyssey

GTA v

Even thought it had a rocky start, No Man’s Sky has gotten much much better since launch with a few updates. It’s pretty grindy but so satisfying collecting better tools, ships and exploring the galaxy.

Pro a sly an unpopular opinion but fallout 76 is a hell of a grind. It’s buggie but it hasn’t diminished the enjoyment I get from playing it. I have about 120 hours in and I’m only level 50. The game has improved a lot since it was released.

Well, depends how much time you have on your hands.

If you want to GRIND, Path of Exile is for you. But don't expect to be anything else than a beginner before you played a good 300-400 hours.

Assasins Creed Odyssey...been playing for 130 hours and I still dont have the whole map unlocked. There is a massive amount of content.

Forza Horizon 4. 100% it.

Monster Hunter World is great for the feeling of a grind

What everyone finds rewarding is different but some that I personally find rewarding are Diablo-likes. Diablo 2, Torchlight 2, Chronicon, Grim Dawn and Last Epoch are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You start as a wimpy son of a blacksmith but eventually learn to fight and become a knight.

it is a pretty hardcore rpg, imagine Skyrim but without dragons, since it is a historical rpg based on medieval Bohemia, so there's a lot of grinding, in fact your character can't even read since he is a peasant, but it is something you can also learn

Virtually none, in my experience. In my first playthrough I just followed the main quest with no grinding and did fine.

In my second playthrough I chose a different approach, and basically ignored the main quest while grinding on my own for fun.

Death STranding isn't a game, it's poetry. Either you like it or you hate it, but what it does, it does amazingly.

I played Death Stranding for 10 hours straight today making deliveries to improve my ratings and I got 8 stars from all the locations I delivered to. It felt like I was playing for 3 hours max

Monster hunter world, iceborne

Monster Hunter World.

Mmos other than wow that aren't kr based. Monster hunter. Warframe. Remnant 1 and 2. V rising, terraria

Monster Hunter. You can't go wrong with World or Rise, both of which have extensive dlc endgames, or you could go with the newest installment, Wilds. Also, Deep Rock Galactic is another good fit if you want a fps of sorts

Warframe, you really feel getting more powerfull as you get more and more things and get into the endgame of the game.

has like 70 different characters to play, all with different abilities and playstyles, hundrets of weapons and mods to make truely uniqe builds.

tons and tons of content to play, very grindy, with challenging stuff to do, but also easy farms for things if you want to shut your brain off.

has 2nd game built into basically with duviri and a lot of other stuff like story, open worlds, linear missions, endless missions.

and its all free to play, where the only things you can only buy for real money are cosmetics made by the community, and the creator gets a cut of every copy sold of his cosmetic.

you can earn the real money currency platinum by farming and trading with players, so you can unlock most cosmetics free to play as well.

on top of that, its one of the best developer teams i know, they really stay connected with the community, up to the CEO, that regularly joins Dev streams to talk with the community.

Monster Hunter

Monster Hunter

It’s Not a RPG, but if You’re into shooters: Hunt Showdown

I‘m still playing, Even After 5400 hours.

Try valheim, been told it's similar to runescape dragon wilds. The remnant series is a decent looter shooter/souls like with guns, remnant 2 being easily the best. I could gush about this game for hours, so do urself a favour and check out a review. The replayability, insane amount of loot, secrets, boss weapons (my fave is the gun that is made of hands and shoots fingerbones), and multiple worlds (losomn, bloodborne/fantasy themed, yaesha which is basically pans labrynth in a jungle n temples, and nerud which is basically alien covenant/prometheus world) with the ability to "reroll them" effectively resetting and changing the layout, bosses, items and loot, and most importantly the quest and final boss of each world(they usually also have "alternate kill methods" which give different boss loot. There's even a backroom easter egg, which admittedly takes a ridiculous amount of time grinding e specific loadout of secret/boss gear and unlockable hidden classes. Also, even the items have secrets, like when u examine them in ur inventory sometimes u cna interact with em, and suddenly bam, u had that missing key u needed this whole time, it just needed assembling first.

Path of Exile is a great game right up your alley, There's a sequel but to get your feet wet into basically millions of hours check out POE, The creators of OG Diablo 2 basically are the ones who created POE 1 & 2.

Might I also offer a suggestion since you enjoy Grim Dawn and are interested in Diablo 2: https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/mod-reign-of-terror/35347

https://pastebin.com/xhSKKFZQ

Valheim may tickle your fancy, best enjoyed with homies though.

Path of Exile is the obvious suggestion if you liked Diablo, it's similar but more complex and better. (Also, PoE 2 is coming in a year or two.)

Warframe is another infinite grind game, a little similar to Destiny but with way better movement and no real timegating on your advancement. (New Weapons/Frames do take a day/3 to build, but just give you different options and aren't required for any content.)

Those two are, IMO, the best online games running today.

If you liked Monster Hunter, then God Eater 3 is also worth a look.

The new season is August 18th and will include an auto-chess mini-game inside the game which imo looks really nice.

It can be overwhelming and before you can just grind at it, you'll need to at least watch a build guide.

To give you a good scale, it's like Last Epoch, but 1) you need to work on your resistance (not hard) starting Act5 and again at act10 whereas in LE you can slowly work on em when in monoliths and 2) the end game has 10x the content. It's also much less forgiving if you build is random.

The Disgaea series as a whole nails it, but falls into JRPG territory. It's a strategy rpg akin to FFT.

Grim Dawn is Diablo-esque, and arguably does Diablo better than Diablo.

I mean I mentioned I've completed monster hunter and 3 people have mentioned it, it was basically a guarantee someone who instantly think OSRS when they saw grindy lol

Have you looked into Path of Exile?

I had the same thing as you, randomly stopped first time, and also played all the games you mentioned.

For a grindy timesink that's actually engaging PoE is the tops. Maybe worth following a guide to hit the endgame and actually experience the game (mapping), as if you're interested in the grind that's the important bit.

2,000+ hours and legit had to force myself to quit eventually. Great game if you don't get too addicted (or can afford the time required to get addicted lol)