Looking good for 1998, oh wait.....

There's also good 'ol ADOM - Ancient Domains of Mystery, both the ASCI version we all grew up loving, and a newer one with fancy schmancy drawn tiles and all that modern stuff like steam integration and whatnot. Though granted then we're back in 94, and veering a Little off course maybe.

http://www.adom.de/home/index.html

I guess for PoE the main point for me is the base game is still free to get, free to play, and free to stop playing as well, so whilst i agree some of the character models are ugly, i can easily live with that as the RPG part of PoE is certainly much much less emphasized compared to the action play and dungeon crawling.. I mean not many of us, if any, stand around typing messages to woo Tarkleigh as a ranger character, for most of us that kind of play isn't even something we consider doing in PoE :p

Then there's also the aspect of the exiles being.. well, exiled, and shipwrecked to boot, on cursed shores crawling with undead and demons - hardly a place i'd expect to find good hairdressers or good cleaning services, and as such i'd almost judge the Scion class to be 'too good looking' to fit that theme, but again personally i make allowances on the grounds of not-having-to-pay :)

Look how a turn of century game has better less robotic animation than PoE

Check out the movement & combat of the D2 Assassin & how running feels like...running.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8TMKyDMgzY