The Diablo that didn't age like fine wine

Diablo III is very nearly here with its' May 15 release date. Blizzard has a tendency to release its games only when they're ready. I think that's commendable personally and I'd much rather wait for a great game than see something released before it's ready. Two weeks ago I started up the first Diablo (hereafter referred to as D1 with similar abbreviations for the sequels) with the idea of going from beginning to end of the games in anticipation of D3. I completed D1 a bit ago and I have recently started D2. For now I wanted to give some impressions of the game I've finished and then do D2 later. Once D3 arrives I'll certainly be writing about it to some degree.

When D1 first came out I thought it was great. My first experience was playing the demo which only had some of the monastery to explore and the warrior was the only available character. I wouldn't say it blew me away (I'd certainly played better games by that point, with Ultima VII: The Black Gate and Final Fantasy VI coming easily to mind), but it was still pretty fun. One thing about me is I tend to like games that keep it simple, and D1 easily achieves simplicity. While I'm not a game developer, from my experience in other areas it seems like simplicity is hard to achieve - not easy. You have to trim all unnecessary elements yet maintain the delicious creamy center. For its time I think D1 was certainly a yummy treat, but to me it has grown stale since then.

I found it repetitive, monotonousness and plodding. Yes, D2 could probably be described as repetitive too, but D2 is still fun for me as I'll talk about more when I do a post dedicated to it. The slow walking speed in D1 makes it excruciatingly slow. In dungeons it is more forgivable because positioning is a large part of strategy in the game, but moving around town is a pain especially when it comes to visiting the witch on the opposite side of the area everything else is in. Since I did a run through the games primarily to refresh myself of the lore and setting, I chose to go through D1 as the warrior (for reasons obvious to anyone who paid even slight attention to D2's story). I'm thinking I might have had more fun if I'd played the rogue or sorcerer, but it's hard to say for sure. Back in the game's day I played through them all and I recall each had their areas of difficulties. My first full run through the game as a sorcerer took some creativity on my part to kill Diablo at the end. In comparison, it was a grueling slog through hell (literally) for my warrior to reach Diablo, but when I finally reached the big bad it was almost laughable for all the resistance he presented. I pretty much used my weapon with knock-back effect to push him against a wall and I then systematically sliced and diced without allowing him barely any openings to get a hit in. As a final boss he's certainly odd in that it's much more dangerous to be at a distance than right in front of him. I had no reason to stay away, but in the time it took to approach him he used his Armageddon spell repeatedly to lower my health enough to almost warrant the use of a single health potion. I had more trouble with going one-on-one with some of his mooks on his level, let alone the groups of 10 or so they like to come in. One particular bitch of an advocate made me chase him literally across the entire level teleporting around.

That brings me to a rant on ranged attackers in D1, who I think deserve a very special, apparently lengthy mention. I dislike them very, very, very much. Now I was moving along through the game at a good pace through the monastery, it wasn't particularly fun but it was smooth sailing, and then I got to a level of the catacombs where two thirds of the enemies were goat men with bows. Partly it was my fault because I was using a strong two-handed weapon and they made baby swiss cheese out of me almost instantly. I nearly gave up, but then I discovered (probably rediscovered) that having a shield is a much, much better idea for a warrior despite any drop in attack strength. I went from dying nearly instantly to being able to stand in a room with more than a dozen of the goat men, still chugging health potions at a modest rate but able to survive. So I could stay alive, but I still wanted to be able to kill things I came across so I could explore. I've come back again to the slow movement speed and while I said I didn't mind so much in dungeons, this instance is the exception. It seems no matter what I could barely get a single attack (note, attack not a hit) in before whatever one I was aiming at would move away. Repeat as necessary until all will to play the game has gone is essentially what the game became for me. The only way I could reliably kill them is to chase them carefully and trap them in a corner. If that were a routine occasionally encountered than okay, but generally I was dealing with rooms of 10 or more of these guys and while I slowly eliminated them one by one the rest were pelting me with arrows. While my shield blocked nearly all of them, my movement was extremely choppy from doing so. It was extraordinarily not fun. Somehow I did make it through that level and continued on with the game, and I at least did get some reward because the caves that came afterward were by far my favorite part of the game.

While the caves still had ranged attackers, they were of the sort that don't run away and generally just threw out some attacks while closing to melee range. Between the less-claustrophobic areas and being able to handle large groups of enemies without having to micro manage every action, the game actually became fun for three levels. When I reached level four of the caves I found the floor flooded with succubi and it was the bow-goat men all over again except now my shield was useless due to their magic attacks and my resistances didn't help. Very fortunately, I found the stairs down quickly and just bypassed most of the area. The hell levels were very dangerous, but manageable. By the time I reached the inevitable floor full of more succubi-type enemies (blood witches?) I was lucky enough to have equipment to provide the max level of magic resistance. Tracking them down carefully one-by-one was still unpleasant, but manageable.

So I proceeded until I reached Diablo's level and then came the ultimate slap. I was extremely dangerous and well protected by this point, all my resistances were maxed and I had made duplicitous use of elixirs, and yet for all my trouble I still had a horrible time clearing out all the advocates in the area. It didn't matter they could barely hurt me, it didn't matter I could badly hurt them, because having a swarm of presumably powerful magicians teleporting around like gnats often before I could land a single hit was miserable. My dexterity was maxed by this point and my weapon greatly increased accuracy, and still. When it comes to expressing how 'fun' it is to chase down all the various ranged enemies, I feel I need to use a colorful sentence along the lines of what Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee often uses, to the effect of: "Expletive buggery cripes expletive." All I can say it no, no this is not good game design and no this is not fun.

Some content in this post is being used under the fair use exception of copyright law. Diablo is copyright of Blizzard Entertainment.