Divine Divinity (2002) was modelled of off Diablo and is wholly hand-crafted, but nothing respawns in it, so it's not a grinder. It's real time and has diablo-style loot and endless ways to build your character. Also more talking than a regular diablo-clone, but not too much. Solo character, no party of adventurers.
The most common suggestion for a last decade diablo-clone would be the Sacred series. I think Sacred Gold (2005) was the most popular as you could even have a horse. That's a full-on respawn etc type clone. I didn't play it for long as I don't like diablo/clones unless they don't have respawns. Solo character, no party of adventurers & real time combat.
There's also a game called Nox (2000) which is a fun little aRPG. Again, solo character, no party of adventurers, real time, ploughing through dark dungeons. Can't remember it having respawns. Only three character archetypes to choose from though.
Cheap as chips is Eschalon Book 1 (2007). Again, Solo character, no party of adventurers, but in this one the button mashing is replaced by turn-based button mashing, so not real time, though there's no great reason for it not to be real time. The game is free on gog. some enemies do respawn ocassionally, but not reliably for grinding, just occassionally to be annoying here and there unpredictably. Diablo-esque random loot. Lots of build possibilities though. Tediuos resting system is it's primary flaw.
