Well, I said I wanted to write about Diablo, and by golly I'm gonna write about Diablo! I doubt I'm saying anything new, and there was no plan or forethought when I wrote this. I haven't really written anything past 280 characters in years. 😭
I recently played through the original Diablo. I'd never really played it before. Diablo II and the Lord of Destruction expansion? Played it tons of times, but never actually sat down to play the original. I purchased it in the Diablo Battlechest around 2003 or so I think? Ages ago. I had a pirated copy of DII for a couple of years before that and was well versed in that game by the time I got my paws on the original.
I remember I attempted to play the original once back then. Immediately I was turned off by the lack of running. It felt so SLOW compared to DII, and it just didn't hold my attention. All I wanted to do was play DII again, and that's what I did.
Lately, after seeing a couple of streamers that I follow play the original, I decided I should give it a go on stream. It was spoopy season, and Diablo is a relatively spoopy game, if not outright edge of your seat sort of scary. It has the vibe, what with the demons and all. So, I decided to give it a fair shot. I booted it up and started playing the game. I knew going in that it was slower, that the controls and movement were clunkier, but I was determined to give it a chance.
And I was pleasantly surprised! Diablo II this is not, it is missing a lot of the quality-of-life features that are in Diablo II, stuff you don't realize you loved until it's not there. Stuff like the aforementioned running, or the lack of a stash (just throw your gold on the ground, who cares?), one big 8 slot bar for potions and scrolls instead of multiple rows of 4, etc. But! Once you I got passed that, I found myself getting engrossed, delving deeper and deeper into the dungeons, towards Diablo himself!
There are also a couple of things that I liked in the original that didn't come back in the sequel. Random shrines that have vastly different (and sometimes detrimental) effects. I actually thought that was cool. Not all shrines in DII were beneficial either, but there was less variety. In Diablo, the shrines and cauldrons would do many more random things to you, your inventory, gear, etc.
Also, the way the game handles grinding. I'm not sure if I prefer it to Diablo II, or many of the subsequent ARPGs that came out after, but it is different. If you find yourself unable to progress because you’re at too low of a level, you must grind. The way Diablo handles grinding is you simply start a new game with the same character. You keep all your gear and items that you had in your inventory. Don't forget to pick up the gold you threw on the ground in town beforehand though or else it is lost forever! You essentially play through the game again, but with your current level and items. This may sound repetitive, but the quests in the game are also random. You don't get every quest in a single game of Diablo. At first I was hesitant to start a new game because I really felt like my character's story would be interrupted if I started a new game, but around level 12 things were getting tough, so I relented and started over. Honestly? Not as jarring as I thought. I found I could basically skip the earlier levels just so long as I could find the stairs down to the next level quick enough.
I started over twice, the second time I was at the final fight with Diablo and just couldn't do it. When I met up with Diablo again the third time through it was still tough a tough fight initially. After a bit of running up and down the stairs I managed to get him in some sort of a stun-lock with my bow and quite handily took him down, promptly shoving the soulstone into my face. I guess that's what one does when you take out a Prime Evil.
In the end I really did enjoy my time with Diablo. The atmosphere was tense and claustrophobic, much more so than the sequel. I love the sequel, I love seeing the different areas, running through the grasslands, deserts, swaps, hells, and mountains, but there's something about trudging down, deeper and deeper, through a twisting labyrinth, full of skeletons, demons, and other horrors that makes the vibe in the original tense. I think it's tough to go back to a game like this in late-2022. The controls are clunky, and the quality-of-life features introduced in its progeny are absent, but I did find it still enjoyable because this time I wasn't expecting it to be anything other than a game from 1997.
My playthrough is available in Twitch's awkward collections feature thing. https://www.twitch.tv/collections/T7Hk6P_nIBd_og