Diablo

What?  You're writing an entry on Diablo?  You mean the one that released back in 1996 and was a game unlike any other of its time?

Damn straight I am!  I had this strange urge to go back and play Diablo I because I realized something awful the other day.

I never beat it.

O.o

That's almost sacrilegious, considering I played the hell out of Diablo II and enjoyed every second of it (except when I died to stupid cheesy shit).

I installed the game and fired it up a few days ago; my main goal was to figure out why people loved both games so much and why they're so against the larger changes that are going to be in Diablo III (things like "skills on rails", "runes on rails", "linear story line", etc.)

Well, I can tell you for sure that people are looking back on both D1 and D2 with rose-tinted glasses from a very far off vantage point.  Specifically, I'm referring to the flaws these people refuse to see in these games.

I've described enough how dumb D2 was about specs and playing the way you want.  You basically can't, regardless of what class you picked.  This article is about D1 anyway, so I'll focus on the really awesome things about D1, and the not so awesome things about D1.

The bad first:

You plop in to the game after picking a Warrior, Rogue, or Sorcerer.  If you know nothing of those tropes, you're fucked from the start.  Most hardcore gamers like this, because it weeds out the not-so-real-gamers-that-aren't-cool-enough-to-play-the-game-because-they-don't-know-that-a-warrior-would-be-easier-to-play-than-a-rogue-because-nerds-know-that-warriors-have-the-best-armor-and-high-vitality-whereas-rogues-have-less-of-both-and-the-sorcerer-has-less-of-those-than-the-rogue.

/Eyeroll

I started a rogue.  Anaphorah plopped down in to Tristram and the water in the well wasn't brown, it was blue.  So I didn't get that quest.

Wait, you don't know what I'm talking about?  There's a quest to fix the poisoned water supply but the only way you get it is if the water in the fountain behind Deckard Cain in Tristram is brown.  If it's blue, then you don't get that quest.

See, starting out as a new player, you'd never know that.  I actually forgot about that quest until I was looking up what to do after I defeated the Skeleton King.

Which brings me to my main negative point about Diablo.  You just get plopped down in to the game without really knowing what to do.  You walk around and, if you're lucky, you find something or someone that gives you a quest.

The only other annoying part is that, as a rogue, I've had to learn to ... block mobs off from swarming me.  I'll stand right in a doorway to pick off mobs one at a time as they line up to kill me.  I've actually run quite a ways away from a large pack, and filtered them through a doorway, one at a time, to kill them.

That just seems kind of lame.  Not sure if that's really how the game should be played or not but, I'm managing through it and I'm level 17 or 18 now, down on Level 10 of the caves right now.  I've turned in the Anvil and I have the Blood Stone but don't know what it's used for yet.  I still have the quest Valor and I'm not sure what the hell I'm supposed to do for it.

Okay now on to the good stuff:

The actual game play is hella fun.  The only reason I never played it because I could never kill the butcher until I looked up how to cheat properly maneuver him in to a position in which I would not take a ton of damage.

Once I got pass him though, the rest of the game has been mildly to moderately challenging.  Nothing really difficult, just some lame mechanics that you have to experience to learn how to surpass them.  And you also have to know what Ability your character uses for attack and damage; Warrior is Strength, Rogue is Dexterity, and Sorcerer is Energy (I think, don't remember, never played a Sorc in D1, too squishy).

I've put all of Anaphorah's stat points in to Dex except for 10, two levels where I needed Strength to wield a better Bow.  I was okay with doing that simply because the Bow is awesome.

So, I've been rockin' mobs out slowly but surely.  I like playing a ranged character, I feel like I can evade mobs much easier than I could were I a Warrior.  But I still feel squishy.  I have a lot of resistances to each of the powers (fire, lightning, and frost?).  So the Slayer mobs in the caves on level 10 don't do shit for damage to me because I resist about half of the damage they do.

What I'm sad about though is that I've got a bunch of spells and can only use them once, maybe twice before I'm out of mana.  The super nice spells drain me of everything and then I'm stuck plinking away with the bow again.  Oh well, I suppose I'm okay with that seeing as I picked the Rogue to begin with.

Other than that, the game is super simple.  Hack-and-slash button smasher.  Get gud gear, kill more mobs to get better gear.

It has been very enjoyable.  I haven't died very many times, and I save every two minutes, so it's rare that I have to start over from a point way back.  Learned that the hard way with older games from the 90s.

While I'm having fun, I think I'm going to enjoy Diablo III way more.  I cannot wait for Tuesday, ridiculously excited.

Update 05/17/2012:  So I narrowly missed finishing Normal mode in Diablo before Diablo III came out.  I am level 21 in the pits of Hell on my rogue, and I vow I will come back to her one day!  Anaphorah, you will rescue Tristram!  Even if it is only doomed to be invaded and destroyed in a few years.