Diablo II at its core is a stretched out version of a first place. It has more of everything and keeps quality of its content comparable all the way from start to the end game. It’s easy to see why it became fan favorite and inspiration for other games. You can just unwind in endless grind and come out out of each one feeling just that little bit closer to what you were grinding for.
The Jist of It
Diablo II is a vastly expanded first game with a lot more variety and room for late game gameplay. This is its greatest strength and weakness, though it’s not like plebs are going to notice that. You see, second game trades quality for quantity. It has more of everything and especially on remastered version, it plays a lot better now. However, in order to get there, everything else took a hit. Sure, game has more budget and it’s reflected in its cinematics and content. However, where is the tight atmosphere? Game went from being a claustrophobic dive into depths of corrupted cathedral to you running across the land, proving your worth in every zone, fighting in grasslands, deserts, jungles, hell and then frozen lands. Game became just a palette of environments for the sake of variety rather than any narrative reason of you being there. Your environment is here solely, because you were in previous one before and it is time for a change now. Same thing had happened to the story. There are more quests in a game, but they are far less interesting and they often just revolve around stopping the prime evil. That is uninspired level of writing as it has no depth.
Outside of my complaints, game does feel better to play and should be considered the definitive version for long term play. However, I believe that Diablo I is qualitatively a better experience and you would be better in playing it first before you are spoiled by second game’s conveniences. After experiencing its story and atmosphere, I would recommend hopping on to the second game and continuing story there and rolling further characters too. First game is best described as single player experience, second one is more like a sandbox. Obviously the second game will have a lot more replayability and be more popular even if first game is better for an average player.
Pointless Annoyances
The biggest issue in this game is that you can only respec your character once. This is a long game where each character can take many months of grinding to get the late game. All of it only to be thrown away, because you miss-clicked a skill or didn’t allocated something ideally. Such system have no reason of being there. The weight of your decisions is not understood when you are leveling and afterwards you only have more busy work. Then if you want to maintain weight, you can easily make it to be a vast resource investment not to be taken lightly. It is something which up to my knowledge wasn’t clever enough to attempt. It’s either one of the two extremes. It’s either completely unforgiving or trivial.
Then there is a pointless loss of loot and gear on death. It’s annoying as it’s pointless. You can just save and exit. Your corpse will be teleported back. Nor trying to retrieve gear makes you lose it like in Dark Souls. However, it has convoluted system where some gear can be lost. It is a system which serves no purpose, creates no stakes. Then it stretches gameplay by making you run all the way back to where you had died. This is especially true on far away bosses like Diablo. However, you can easily teleport in and out. You can leave portal open at your leisure. Game design doesn’t support these annoyances and they serve no greater purpose rather than to be poorly thought out oddities.
Horadric Cube is a complete mess. It might had been good when we were children randomly put items in and discover individual recipes in shady forums from other gamers, bad for modern gaming with perfect encyclopedias. From gameplay perspective, there is no way to find those recipes outside of blind trial and error. There is no in-game motivation, hints or quests for recipes. It’s here to sit pointless if you don’t pull out encyclopedia and by that point, what is even the point of not making a window with all available recipes in a first place? It’s an archaic system which Diablo fans mindlessly drag along for the ride even if it’s hopelessly outdated. We are no longer children who get their panties wet when they accidentally make things happen. We will just minimize game, get to encyclopedia and make whatever guide told us to make.
Many had tried, few succeeded
Gearing in such games almost always tend to be poorly done. Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile. You can play dozens of hours and not get anything new nor getting new item really makes you feel more powerful or excited.
While Diablo still has issues with color rarity and naming as it is confusing, drop rates felt good. Rare items were actually rare and it was always exciting to get them. Crafting also could produce actually useful gear. Sets needed grinding just like with Unique items. Game also feels great with its gems, jewels and runes, giving micro bumps of always finding something valuable from fighting trash mobs. Likewise, the best drops can always drop from any mob, not just a boss which gives you a lot more motivation in grinding trash rather than rushing to a boss for that big dopamine hit. At last, magic items and below are not completely useless in this game. They can feature unique stats which can be particularly useful and these items can be used in recipes for real gear upgrades for you. Just like with mercenaries each selling you items which are potentially useful to your character in some way. That is often not understood and failed to replicate in all the other Diablo clones who tend to throw at you just endless seas of trashy random items at you in their crude comprehension of Diablo II mechanics.
The only thing sadder is being a designer of such games and despite your best efforts, your mind simply cannot comprehend the brilliance of an old game and your hands being too crooked to create something just as good. Imagine that, spending your entire life and subconsciously knowing that you are never going to surpass systems which you studied and worked your entire life for in recreating. Being carried on shoulders of giants, forever trying, but your game despite resources or market never really feeling right and failing to attract loyal fanbase. In the end, you yourself are going back to play those games rather than the one who you created yourself.
In the End
After introduction of a remaster, it is clearly a game which is better for most people. However, despite graphical overhaul and other quality of life changes, I felt more immersed in first Diablo game. It felt like a journey, an epic quest. Diablo II on the other hand feels like a pleasant grind to which you want return to unwind day after day. It has a lot more meta progression and content for a never ending grind thus making it more suitable for every day gaming. Throw it a class leading remaster and it is no brainer which game of the two is better at the moment. Diablo I is essential game for gaming connoisseur who want to witness the prime evil who started all of the lesser Diablo-like games. Both were just terrific games to go through, if only more people would be like me and would challenge themselves with new experiences.