O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Can you believe that it’s been more than 26 years since the release of Diablo? So weird to think about it. I mean, it wasn’t the first real-time RPG or the first game to be an action RPG. But it became what defined action RPG for the western market, a mix of ideas from roguelikes, lots of loot and simple but engaging dungeon crawling, solo or in multiplayer. And while I understand why people always love the second game the most – to me, the original game has always meant more.
That said – I actually only finished it once before. And I’m pretty sure it was on the PlayStation port too. I’ve never played the often forgotten Hellfire expansion either, so I’ve been meaning to replay the game for quite a while now.
As one might expect – I did use mods. The GOG release of the game is perfectly playable out of the box, but unless you are a purist for the sake of purism, I’d say that playing the original Diablo as is is just a bad idea. Let me just remind you that you couldn’t hold mouse button to continuously attack in that original version among many other things, do you really want to re-experience that? There are a couple of popular engine ports that are true to the original game, but bring in a lot of improvements and I’ve personally selected DevilutionX. With it, I could run the game at my native resolution in widescreen and with a far less claustrophobic zoom than the original game allowed, could enable automatic pickups for gold, ability to highlight items on the floor as all later games allow and also, just to experience all of the story, disabled the quest randomization so all side quests are always available. I could also add even more quality of life improvements that got common in later games, but even enabling this (and the fact that by default this version allows hold to attack) made the experience so much better.
Since the experience itself is still quite damn great. It may be hard to remember, but the basic flow of Diablo was quite simple – you have one single dungeon that is divided into several distinct areas, each area unlocks a shortcut to the town above and you just go deeper and deeper until you find and kill Diablo. That was really it, no other areas, no big twists on this formula. You could actually save the game at any point as well and reloading the save brought you exactly where you saved with the world state restored, as there was no continue option after dying.
While the storytelling and voice acting are uneven by modern standards, and once astonishing CGI cutscenes are extremely dated today, Diablo still manages to keep your attention with its impeccable atmosphere and really fun pace. Each next floor of the dungeon might have an additional side quest, selection of which is randomized per playthrough in sets, so you can’t get all possible ones in a single go. The loot system is extremely simple with only common, magic and unique items available. Warrior and Rogue class don’t have any proper skill systems of their own and the right click is basically reserved for using magic spells only, becoming the main button for the Sorcerer. Unique monsters were also quite rare and most often reserved to be a boss of a side quest, including the memorable Butcher. It’s all so very simple, yet so engaging and fun.
Though not without issues. Even with the mod and its quality of life improvements, some concepts and enemies are just plain annoying. For example, it is basically required as a Warrior to use doorways as chokepoints, run away and shoot while holding Shift as a Rogue or learn the cheesiest spells and strats as a Sorcerer to survive any big groups of enemies, of which there are many. Because as soon as you get at least mildly surrounded, you die, being stunlocked and not able to hit anything, even if everyone surrounding you will die in one hit that you can land. And ranged enemies when playing as a Warrior are just obnoxious, as every fight with them turns into a chase across the level. The fact that the Shrines could have negative results and all of their text was intentionally unclear wasn’t a great choice either. And if you got super unlucky and got 2 unique monsters with their support group to spawn near an entrance to the level with no chokepoint available, prepare to save scum and for a long long time.
Thankfully, if you play just the original game and don’t enable all quests, bad instances are quite rare and it’s surprising just how much the game nailed with the genre first try. And also fun to see how the game hinted on a lot of ideas and story elements that would be expanded in the sequel.
Hellfire, however, is an entirely different tale. While it did add a few curious ideas, like oils that can improve weapons permanently, a new character class (and 2 unfinished ones that can be hacked back in) and also quality of life features that are included with the mods anyway nowadays, it’s incredibly poorly designed. Tonally it’s way too cheesy and doesn’t fit the main game at all. New locations look neat, but are not very fun in practice. Most of the new enemies are about the worst thing in the entire game and make some levels insufferable. And it also buffs Diablo himself for no good reason, just so the fight with him is longer.
I was glad to revisit the original Diablo and while it hasn’t aged as gracefully as I had hoped, it’s still incredibly fun when played with mods. Oh and the soundtrack is still among the very best. Hellfire, though… I’m glad I’ve finally played it, but I do not recommend playing it. Just use the original game only with the mods and don’t bother with Hellfire. Shame the original game never got any proper remasters (apart from an annual “event” in Diablo 3, which is such a stupid idea) and, given how crap modern Blizzard is, it probably never will. There’s always the original Torchlight, of course, but there is something about the mood and the style of Diablo that makes it still feel great, 26 years later.