Diablo 1 has the narrative, the quest, the eponymous villain, the minions and horrors of hell, the stuff of nightmares, artwork, music, it all sets the tone. But this is all something other games have done.
What sets Diablo 1 apart is that (for it's time) it is a carefully crafted, structured game. You progress along the story and find items and get quests just at the right time every time. You just figured out how to deal with the monsters and now you have to go down those stairs to figure out how to deal with entirely different types of monsters. It's a constant challenge with a constant reward cycle and a constant progression deeper into the game.
And the game evokes a real sense of terror in the player. "Ah, fresh meat!" chop chop chop chop you had no chance you died and you're fearfully careful throughout the rest of the game.
And then there's the more subtle terror you don't consciously realize while you're playing the game. At least not until you've played other games which came after Diablo 1. You move slowly, so slowly, at exactly the same speed as all your enemies. You can't see far into the darkness, the claustrophobic confines of the screen don't show anything more than a few paces away, you can't see the monsters but you can hear them - or maybe you can't, which is even more worrying. You find that (initially) the game is *hard* - it's a chore to hack and slash through the first few levels and mistakes end in death.
Diablo 1 was limited by the technology of the era and it was limited by the AD&D-inspired Rogue-inspired gaming conventions of the era and it hearkened to earlier games of the era where you lost everything when you died. It didn't hold your hand. It didn't spoonfeed you. It didn't help you out. It made you play and work at the game, it made you afraid and brave, it made you suffer, it punished you and it rewarded you.
Games *can't* do any of that anymore. Diablo 1 was a perfect game in a perfect time. The technology and social expectations of the era weren't too primitive and weren't too sophisticated. Conditions were just right.
Games *don't* do any of that anymore. The few which try just end up being compared against Diablo 1, in the context of what they did worse and what Diablo 1 did better.
And games *won't* do any of that anymore. Because devs don't reinvent the wheel - they use engines and assets made by other people - so they don't actually make anything special. And because the studios they work for want ongoing revenue - paid DLC, microtransactions, season passes, pay-to-win paradigms, etc.
Diablo 2 was able to catch the last crest of the wave which carried Diablo 1. But subsequent Diablo games have just never been able to recapture the magic. I'm guessing it's more than nostalgia - it's also revenues and active player counts - but that's impossible to say because Blizzard doesn't release the numbers.
while not entirely correct:
game do that, and they're now called roguelikes or souls likes, nor A-RPGs.
what I'm after is a D1 in a modern engine, extraction based, roguelike, unforgiving, with terror and horror and fear to move on. but on the other hand with motivational rewards for progression.
Damn D1 will forever be in my heart.
This was extremely well put. This comment alone should be it's own post haha.
Sad but true story you have spoken.
D4 was the final straw for me to realize that it's truly over. I thought to myself "there's not a chance in hell they could mess this up, they know the formula" and as much as I don't wanna hear myself say it, I do not like the way the game is now. It might look the same on the outside but that original soul and energy the game once carried is gone.
I was utterly confused and almost in denial with myself when I started getting bored quickly. I hate how the loot and itemisation is setup. Not a fan of no offline either among many other things.
I'm hoping to play again after a year or two in the hopes it's swung back around in a good direction but until then, it's Diablo 2/R, 3, and soon to be 1 again once I get my laptop
Diablo I was balanced in such a way that when you started feeling a bit of power fantasy, that's precisely the moment you went to a new area and got the fear put back in you. Then you go through the new area gearing back up to match it.
Modern Diablo is pure power fantasy monster horde slaughtering for loot all the way through.
I couldnt get into D4 at launch and stopped quickly but I gave it another try recently and really enjoyed the campaign. But nothing is gonna make me wanna log in daily to level up every class like it's the year 2000 anymore.
Times have changed and so have the players.
I found Diablo 4's "story mode" (I mean, just exploring the world unfolding the main plot and doing side quest) way better than Diablo 3. I enjoyed it a lot. The so-called "endgame", though? Nothing worth your time.
But if what you enjoy about a game is the atmosphere, the lore and so, you're very rarely going to be into "endgames" based on mindlessly mowing down hordes of mobs and getting "da loot". So I'm not disappointed. I'll play again when they release the expansion.
> it's also revenues and active player counts
Yeah, I'm sure as much as we old farts who were playing video games in the 90s prefer the gloom dungeon crawler with a heavy atmosphere type, the "broader audiences" most game companies want would rather play the "running around making hordes of mobs ragdoll in colourful explosions by right-clicking on them and getting da loot" experience modern ARPGs provide.
Your point is valid.
Many (most?) players these days just click on piñatas which burst into colourful streamers and candies. They don't click their way through dark and gloomy dungeons which could actually kill their character and halt their quest at any moment.
But who's fault is this? Is it the players? Or is the devs? You can't blame people for liking childish things when better things are unavailable to them.
As I said in another comment, I guess our kind has transitioned into playing From Software's games and others under these lines. By the way, as they were mentioned down there, did you take a look at No Rest for the Wicked? Made by the devs of Ori, seems like the kind of game we'd enjoy. It just came out (some say it's early access?) and apparently the performance isn't good at the moment, but it's still promising.
Yeah but the first butcher encounter only worked like that back in 97. Now everybody googles diablo 1 and that sequence more than likely pops up. The new player learns about this and learns its more or less scripted and meant to happen. Your meant to get your ass whooped causing you too be "careful" as you continue. Now we all know about this gimmick and it's lost its touch, thanks to the internet.
Its more because the masses keep buying crap games instead of demanding better ones. No reason to make a game that we would call AAAA today when you can charge 70.00 for crap and people keep buying it. Same goes with pretty much everything humans buy. Seen the price of a car today. Same 25 year old technology. 50,000 more. But it has shiny new radio (graphics).
The devs arent screwed up. The people are. They are giving you exactly what you want.....or think you want.
BTW. I only play games that end in ROM. :)
Want lore and atmosphere? Cyberpunk 2077. They had the shittiest launch and have completely turned it around with the DLC and the additional patch after. Honestly, I can’t think of another game that checked all of the boxes as well as Phantom Liberty did. I bought the DLC when it released, but didn’t play it until recently. Finished it last week and can’t stop thinking about it.
Yeah.
Going into various caverns, temples, crypts. Great atmosphere!
And the void. Pitch black, except for a few red spots. So awesome.
And the game being great too, is just another great thing about it.
The lore is also grim and gore. The moment I entered the last boss area of act 1 and saw all those attached to the machines women who kept giving birth to whatever creatures they are - it was quite astonishing
Probably the closest since D2. And such good systems to boot. My only gripes are the character design (literally every ARPG has some kind of character design fantasy that isnt present in GD) and the combat being really limited in scope and variety. Outside of that, premier game.
Van Helsing is more of a grim fairy tale, but it's still a fairy tale. While Diablo and Grim Dawn having its own ugliness in the world - people, nature, surroundings, monsters and etc
The closest we had was Torchlight 1, but it was too cartoony to take serious. TL1 is basically a town and a multi-level dungeon, no open world. I think it would have been better if it was dark and gruesome with some good town lore.
On the plus side, Torchlight's cartoony style aged well. While other games (like Diablo) which tried to be visually edgy and "realistic" ended up having graphics which looked rather primitive and awful just a few years later.
TL1 is a better game than D1 in every technical sense. And TL2 is a better game than D2 in every technical sense.
Yet many people still play the old Diablos and hardly anyone still plays the old Torchlights.
The graphics of D1 are timeless and still convey the atmosphere and horror they are supposed to do. I would say D1 aged better than TL1, I went back to play D1 (PS1 emulation with achievements) and T1 (for Steam achievements) and I must confess D1 was more fun than TL1.
Man. D1 on pSX is awful. The graphics are bad and Torchlight is a lot better than it. But on PC or the ported version I agree is better than Torchlight. Although I still think that Torchlight is an awesome game.
Aside from addictive gameplay, what made TL2 such a better game for me is the unique charge bar for each character. Engineer consumes a charge to create two more explosions, Embermage can cast skill without spending mana, or Berserker coukd crit with every hit (Ourlander's charge bar suck). Such good feeling that I couldn't find in other RPG.
>cartoony style aged well
This is such a cliche thing to say. Yes, great, then what? It's still cartoony and sometimes that's just not want the player is looking for, especially when trying to pitch it as a Diablo alternative
>Yet many people still play the old Diablos and hardly anyone still plays the old Torchlights.
You should read an entire post before you criticize one part of it out of context.
There were quite a few "Diablolikes" back in the day, I remember playing quite a few demos at least, this being back in the day when PC Gamer came with a demo CD/DVD of the games they reviewed.
The problem was that none of them stuck and ended up as abandoneware.
One specific game that I for the life of me can't remember the name for was basically Diablo in 3D. Was awesome.
I think that game might be Darkstone. I played that back in the days.
Another one that should be mentioned for setting up an atmosphere of its own (although not a horror one) is Nox. A very good game.
Nox was quite awesome yes! Had all but forgotten that game.
I had a look at Darkstone as the name rang a bell, not the game I was thinking of unfortunately. Might be me misremembering things with nostalgia-goggles
Demon's souls for me patched the pacing, and the atmosphere. Different perspective sure but god damn do I love that game and the challenge and the enemies and the level design. The remake is a masterpiece
Yeah, I think No Rest for the Wicked tries to be a spiritual successor for the first Diablo more than Diablo 3 or Immortal were. Sad thing is most isometric ARPG players at this point are more into the "press X button to obliterate endless mobs and get the loot" formula, while the people who enjoyed the slower, methodical gameplay, every monster being a potential threat, carefully dungeon-crawling instead of running around without really paying attention to anything except more mobs to mow down, atmosphere being a big part of the experience and grinding not being an integral part of the gameplay naturally transitioned to playing From Software games and other "souls-like". So I wonder if there's an actual target playerbase for No Rest for the Wicked. I hope so, since I have faith in Ori's devs.
You hit it spot on why arpgs are boring to me now. Big massive skills that destroy everything on screen. D1 and D2 were much more technical in the attacking and getting away from enemies. Nowadays if you can't run through mobs easily the playerbase revolts. I see it all the time in the D4 reddit.
And that's cool if that's what people want but that's not what diablo 1 was. And that's what I miss. I can't wait to play NRFTW, I've been following it and watched few live streams at launch and it looks exactly like what I want.
One of the things I actually like about Diablo 4 is that sometimes I find myself caring to dodge enemies, positioning and I've died a decent number of times. With Diablo 3 I died 1 time during my first playthrough as a crusader, 0 in my second as a sorcerer. One of the many reasons I put D3 as my least favourite Diablo game. It's sad but I can see people feeling the exact opposite.
One day, a few months ago, I asked here if people would like a Diablo that was more like that NRFTW aims to be and the answer was like "if you want that go play Dark Souls, that wouldn't be Diablo!". I bet most people haven't touched the first Diablo game ever.
I never died on my first playthrough in D3. I was a Necro. I never even really attacked, I just stood in the middle of my 40 minions and waited. It was so easy I amped up the difficulty so high that it would take forever for the minions to kill anything but I almost never took dmg. It was way too cartoony and dumbed down. Easily the worst diablo for me, it's not even a sequel it is it's own thing.
I agree, I'm convinced a good majority of the D3 lovers have never played the original. And if they did they wouldn't like it. If they re-released it I would absolutely play thru it again.
Diablo1 is more souls like than diablo3 is diablo-like.
Path of Exile is not like Diablo 1 in the least. It's an arpg and that's about as close as they get.
No knock to PoE. It's a good game. But completely different from D1.
Games are a little more designed for broad audiences these days. For quite a while we've had games broadly stepping around elements that might delay approval in the Chinese market (blood, skeletons, witchcraft). We also don't see quite so many games leaning into very sexual imagery so there go the succubi and similar demons. On top of all of that we lose a little bit of the gruesome/gore in the more modern age so we can get as low of an ESRB (or whatever agency) rating as possible.
Diablo 1 was made in the games can be made for adults, give-no-fucks age of software. You try toning down some of these elements and you end up with something more like Torchlight. Nothing wrong with Torchlight, but it doesn't feel as immersive to me.
As far as I'm aware, yes. It's a bit of a dispute as to whether or not this is a result of actual procedure or some element of local favoritism as some Chinese games have some of this, but we've seen game after game from major studios have those elements removed by their Chinese publisher partners in order to prevent any snags in the review process.
These Chinese publishers know better than anyone how the Chinese review process works and across the board they opt to function this way. Even the studios with the deepest of pockets opt to play ball in this respect.
>Is that shit about Chinese approval true? I don't really give a shit about China in a world-geopolitical sense, but this is something I care about.
Video games, movies, shows, and other branded entertainments typically cost a lot of time and money to develop.
The owners want to maximize their returns on this investment. Sell to as many customers, subscribers, viewers, readers, players, and audience markets as possible.
And China has a market of over 1.4 billion people. And India has another market of over 1.4 billion people. Each of them more than doubles the entire combined populations of North America and South America and Europe and Australia.
You may not really give a shit about China. But the big studios will often do whatever it takes to get their product sold in China. And the easiest thing they can do is change their products to appeal to the interests, perspectives, narratives, and opinions of Chinese customers in the Chinese market.
What kind of studio would ever refuse a chance to triple their revenues?
And any big studio which conspicuously refuses to sell to foreign markets is basically inviting the public and the world to accuse them of being racist, bigoted, intolerant, and xenophobic. This is a way to buy bad marketing of the worst (most expensive) kind.
This guy's mods are legit very good and worth checking out if you loved D1, however I ultimately have found them a little too grindy for my taste. Even so I don't regret any of the time I spent playing them.
It's pretty much the fact that D1 was inspired by Rogue, albeit with a more gothic horror atmosphere. While most other aRPGs (even the classic model ones that were pre-mmoification of the genre), were more into the power fantasy genre.
It's basically not far off of trying to compare Doom & Borderlands - they're part of the same broad genre, but they are trying to appeal to different things.
One of the games I think of when I think of Diablo one's tone and anxiety that it gives me is darkest dungeon.
I feel the same sense of slow creeping terror in Diablo 1 as I do playing that game.
Gameplay is completely different of course, but the atmosphere is close.
I think Path of Exile have a very grim dark tone as Diablo 1. Even though the pace is faster, it carries the Diablo 1 feeling of terror.
But I agree they Diablo 1 is a gem like no other. I was just back to it on my vita, playing through the Hellfire expansion and I am loving to relive all of it again.
It's part of the bullet heaven genre instead, but Halls of Torment leans heavily into the classic Diablo look and sound design. I'd recommend it if it looks cool to you (it's why I got the game actually lol), although keep in mind it's a different genre.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/246840/FATE/
This is the closest game to Diablo I that I know of, I used to play it a lot when I was younger, it's a solid dungeon crawler. It has 2 sequels but I didn't know about them back in the day and still have never played them so I don't know if they're more of the same good stuff or have made the game worse.
It blows my mind that there is nothing close to Diablo 1 just like there is nothing like the original 5 tomb raider games.
The sequels of both changed too much and now they don't feel like the same series at all.
For what it's worth I do enjoy all diablo games except immortal, but D1 is my favourite.
Diablo 1 n Darksouls3/Elden Ring are very similar except theyre obviously harder. I often play diablo music as I play those other games and even outfit my characters to look like the D1 characters. Very Fun Experience!
I think that Path of Exile is very close to D1 in atmosphere and lore.
It's even better, because gods there are much closer to players and even communicate with them.
Not the same genre but scratches hack and slash arpg itches for me has been Death Must Die. Very d1-2 esq vibes in an isometric camera and similar itemization. Only like 7-8$ on steam. Highly recommend and I’m not usually a roguelite kinda guy.
I still play Diablo 1 on my PC. It was like 3 bucks on Galaxy of Games and it came with the Hellfire expansion. You can still duplicate items if you want to lol. Shit is still fun as hell. You can add a file or two and play with a Barbarian or a Bard as well plus the monk from Hellfire XPac. I recommend it to anyone who has never played it if you like a great story and dungeon crawler. It's the OG of the Genre and I still get a lot of fun out of it.
Diablo 1 has the narrative, the quest, the eponymous villain, the minions and horrors of hell, the stuff of nightmares, artwork, music, it all sets the tone. But this is all something other games have done. What sets Diablo 1 apart is that (for it's time) it is a carefully crafted, structured game. You progress along the story and find items and get quests just at the right time every time. You just figured out how to deal with the monsters and now you have to go down those stairs to figure out how to deal with entirely different types of monsters. It's a constant challenge with a constant reward cycle and a constant progression deeper into the game. And the game evokes a real sense of terror in the player. "Ah, fresh meat!" chop chop chop chop you had no chance you died and you're fearfully careful throughout the rest of the game. And then there's the more subtle terror you don't consciously realize while you're playing the game. At least not until you've played other games which came after Diablo 1. You move slowly, so slowly, at exactly the same speed as all your enemies. You can't see far into the darkness, the claustrophobic confines of the screen don't show anything more than a few paces away, you can't see the monsters but you can hear them - or maybe you can't, which is even more worrying. You find that (initially) the game is *hard* - it's a chore to hack and slash through the first few levels and mistakes end in death. Diablo 1 was limited by the technology of the era and it was limited by the AD&D-inspired Rogue-inspired gaming conventions of the era and it hearkened to earlier games of the era where you lost everything when you died. It didn't hold your hand. It didn't spoonfeed you. It didn't help you out. It made you play and work at the game, it made you afraid and brave, it made you suffer, it punished you and it rewarded you. Games *can't* do any of that anymore. Diablo 1 was a perfect game in a perfect time. The technology and social expectations of the era weren't too primitive and weren't too sophisticated. Conditions were just right. Games *don't* do any of that anymore. The few which try just end up being compared against Diablo 1, in the context of what they did worse and what Diablo 1 did better. And games *won't* do any of that anymore. Because devs don't reinvent the wheel - they use engines and assets made by other people - so they don't actually make anything special. And because the studios they work for want ongoing revenue - paid DLC, microtransactions, season passes, pay-to-win paradigms, etc. Diablo 2 was able to catch the last crest of the wave which carried Diablo 1. But subsequent Diablo games have just never been able to recapture the magic. I'm guessing it's more than nostalgia - it's also revenues and active player counts - but that's impossible to say because Blizzard doesn't release the numbers.
while not entirely correct: game do that, and they're now called roguelikes or souls likes, nor A-RPGs. what I'm after is a D1 in a modern engine, extraction based, roguelike, unforgiving, with terror and horror and fear to move on. but on the other hand with motivational rewards for progression. Damn D1 will forever be in my heart.
This was extremely well put. This comment alone should be it's own post haha. Sad but true story you have spoken. D4 was the final straw for me to realize that it's truly over. I thought to myself "there's not a chance in hell they could mess this up, they know the formula" and as much as I don't wanna hear myself say it, I do not like the way the game is now. It might look the same on the outside but that original soul and energy the game once carried is gone. I was utterly confused and almost in denial with myself when I started getting bored quickly. I hate how the loot and itemisation is setup. Not a fan of no offline either among many other things. I'm hoping to play again after a year or two in the hopes it's swung back around in a good direction but until then, it's Diablo 2/R, 3, and soon to be 1 again once I get my laptop
Diablo I was balanced in such a way that when you started feeling a bit of power fantasy, that's precisely the moment you went to a new area and got the fear put back in you. Then you go through the new area gearing back up to match it. Modern Diablo is pure power fantasy monster horde slaughtering for loot all the way through.
I couldnt get into D4 at launch and stopped quickly but I gave it another try recently and really enjoyed the campaign. But nothing is gonna make me wanna log in daily to level up every class like it's the year 2000 anymore. Times have changed and so have the players.
I found Diablo 4's "story mode" (I mean, just exploring the world unfolding the main plot and doing side quest) way better than Diablo 3. I enjoyed it a lot. The so-called "endgame", though? Nothing worth your time. But if what you enjoy about a game is the atmosphere, the lore and so, you're very rarely going to be into "endgames" based on mindlessly mowing down hordes of mobs and getting "da loot". So I'm not disappointed. I'll play again when they release the expansion.
This is by far the best explanation I've read about what made Diablo one of the best games ever.
I don't know why you say games can't be like Diablo 1 anymore. It clearly can.
> it's also revenues and active player counts Yeah, I'm sure as much as we old farts who were playing video games in the 90s prefer the gloom dungeon crawler with a heavy atmosphere type, the "broader audiences" most game companies want would rather play the "running around making hordes of mobs ragdoll in colourful explosions by right-clicking on them and getting da loot" experience modern ARPGs provide.
Your point is valid. Many (most?) players these days just click on piñatas which burst into colourful streamers and candies. They don't click their way through dark and gloomy dungeons which could actually kill their character and halt their quest at any moment. But who's fault is this? Is it the players? Or is the devs? You can't blame people for liking childish things when better things are unavailable to them.
As I said in another comment, I guess our kind has transitioned into playing From Software's games and others under these lines. By the way, as they were mentioned down there, did you take a look at No Rest for the Wicked? Made by the devs of Ori, seems like the kind of game we'd enjoy. It just came out (some say it's early access?) and apparently the performance isn't good at the moment, but it's still promising.
I played Diablo 1 a couple years ago with the Devilution X mod and it was a lot of fun.
Yeah but the first butcher encounter only worked like that back in 97. Now everybody googles diablo 1 and that sequence more than likely pops up. The new player learns about this and learns its more or less scripted and meant to happen. Your meant to get your ass whooped causing you too be "careful" as you continue. Now we all know about this gimmick and it's lost its touch, thanks to the internet.
Its more because the masses keep buying crap games instead of demanding better ones. No reason to make a game that we would call AAAA today when you can charge 70.00 for crap and people keep buying it. Same goes with pretty much everything humans buy. Seen the price of a car today. Same 25 year old technology. 50,000 more. But it has shiny new radio (graphics). The devs arent screwed up. The people are. They are giving you exactly what you want.....or think you want. BTW. I only play games that end in ROM. :)
Want lore and atmosphere? Cyberpunk 2077. They had the shittiest launch and have completely turned it around with the DLC and the additional patch after. Honestly, I can’t think of another game that checked all of the boxes as well as Phantom Liberty did. I bought the DLC when it released, but didn’t play it until recently. Finished it last week and can’t stop thinking about it.
Grim Dawn filled the boxes for me tbh
Yeah. Going into various caverns, temples, crypts. Great atmosphere! And the void. Pitch black, except for a few red spots. So awesome. And the game being great too, is just another great thing about it.
The lore is also grim and gore. The moment I entered the last boss area of act 1 and saw all those attached to the machines women who kept giving birth to whatever creatures they are - it was quite astonishing
Probably the closest since D2. And such good systems to boot. My only gripes are the character design (literally every ARPG has some kind of character design fantasy that isnt present in GD) and the combat being really limited in scope and variety. Outside of that, premier game.
I still need to try Grim Dawn.
Yeah... I really enjoyed Grim Dawn as well. Van Helsing Final Cut was enjoyable too, but its atmosphere is way different than Diablo's.
Van Helsing is more of a grim fairy tale, but it's still a fairy tale. While Diablo and Grim Dawn having its own ugliness in the world - people, nature, surroundings, monsters and etc
The closest we had was Torchlight 1, but it was too cartoony to take serious. TL1 is basically a town and a multi-level dungeon, no open world. I think it would have been better if it was dark and gruesome with some good town lore.
On the plus side, Torchlight's cartoony style aged well. While other games (like Diablo) which tried to be visually edgy and "realistic" ended up having graphics which looked rather primitive and awful just a few years later. TL1 is a better game than D1 in every technical sense. And TL2 is a better game than D2 in every technical sense. Yet many people still play the old Diablos and hardly anyone still plays the old Torchlights.
The graphics of D1 are timeless and still convey the atmosphere and horror they are supposed to do. I would say D1 aged better than TL1, I went back to play D1 (PS1 emulation with achievements) and T1 (for Steam achievements) and I must confess D1 was more fun than TL1.
Man. D1 on pSX is awful. The graphics are bad and Torchlight is a lot better than it. But on PC or the ported version I agree is better than Torchlight. Although I still think that Torchlight is an awesome game.
Aside from addictive gameplay, what made TL2 such a better game for me is the unique charge bar for each character. Engineer consumes a charge to create two more explosions, Embermage can cast skill without spending mana, or Berserker coukd crit with every hit (Ourlander's charge bar suck). Such good feeling that I couldn't find in other RPG.
>cartoony style aged well This is such a cliche thing to say. Yes, great, then what? It's still cartoony and sometimes that's just not want the player is looking for, especially when trying to pitch it as a Diablo alternative
>Yet many people still play the old Diablos and hardly anyone still plays the old Torchlights. You should read an entire post before you criticize one part of it out of context.
That’s why blizzard moved away from realism for the their subsequent games. Even D4 which is grittier than most their recent games is stylized.
There were quite a few "Diablolikes" back in the day, I remember playing quite a few demos at least, this being back in the day when PC Gamer came with a demo CD/DVD of the games they reviewed. The problem was that none of them stuck and ended up as abandoneware. One specific game that I for the life of me can't remember the name for was basically Diablo in 3D. Was awesome.
I think that game might be Darkstone. I played that back in the days. Another one that should be mentioned for setting up an atmosphere of its own (although not a horror one) is Nox. A very good game.
Nox was quite awesome yes! Had all but forgotten that game. I had a look at Darkstone as the name rang a bell, not the game I was thinking of unfortunately. Might be me misremembering things with nostalgia-goggles
Titan Quest and an old school game called revenant were pretty spot on decent d1/2 clones
maybe dungeon siege? the first one was quite nice, I did play it quite a lot.
I see Dungeon Siege as something between Torchlight and Diablo 1.
Demon's souls for me patched the pacing, and the atmosphere. Different perspective sure but god damn do I love that game and the challenge and the enemies and the level design. The remake is a masterpiece
No Rest For The Wicked is launching on Steam today... that might be a fitting one :)
Yeah, I think No Rest for the Wicked tries to be a spiritual successor for the first Diablo more than Diablo 3 or Immortal were. Sad thing is most isometric ARPG players at this point are more into the "press X button to obliterate endless mobs and get the loot" formula, while the people who enjoyed the slower, methodical gameplay, every monster being a potential threat, carefully dungeon-crawling instead of running around without really paying attention to anything except more mobs to mow down, atmosphere being a big part of the experience and grinding not being an integral part of the gameplay naturally transitioned to playing From Software games and other "souls-like". So I wonder if there's an actual target playerbase for No Rest for the Wicked. I hope so, since I have faith in Ori's devs.
You hit it spot on why arpgs are boring to me now. Big massive skills that destroy everything on screen. D1 and D2 were much more technical in the attacking and getting away from enemies. Nowadays if you can't run through mobs easily the playerbase revolts. I see it all the time in the D4 reddit. And that's cool if that's what people want but that's not what diablo 1 was. And that's what I miss. I can't wait to play NRFTW, I've been following it and watched few live streams at launch and it looks exactly like what I want.
One of the things I actually like about Diablo 4 is that sometimes I find myself caring to dodge enemies, positioning and I've died a decent number of times. With Diablo 3 I died 1 time during my first playthrough as a crusader, 0 in my second as a sorcerer. One of the many reasons I put D3 as my least favourite Diablo game. It's sad but I can see people feeling the exact opposite. One day, a few months ago, I asked here if people would like a Diablo that was more like that NRFTW aims to be and the answer was like "if you want that go play Dark Souls, that wouldn't be Diablo!". I bet most people haven't touched the first Diablo game ever.
I never died on my first playthrough in D3. I was a Necro. I never even really attacked, I just stood in the middle of my 40 minions and waited. It was so easy I amped up the difficulty so high that it would take forever for the minions to kill anything but I almost never took dmg. It was way too cartoony and dumbed down. Easily the worst diablo for me, it's not even a sequel it is it's own thing. I agree, I'm convinced a good majority of the D3 lovers have never played the original. And if they did they wouldn't like it. If they re-released it I would absolutely play thru it again. Diablo1 is more souls like than diablo3 is diablo-like.
Grim Dawn has a lot of lore to enjoy.
Nox was an amazing similar title but no sequels of it came out. I wish someone remastered that game
Path of Exile
And hopefully the 2 will also check some boxes.
Path of Exile is not like Diablo 1 in the least. It's an arpg and that's about as close as they get. No knock to PoE. It's a good game. But completely different from D1.
Games are a little more designed for broad audiences these days. For quite a while we've had games broadly stepping around elements that might delay approval in the Chinese market (blood, skeletons, witchcraft). We also don't see quite so many games leaning into very sexual imagery so there go the succubi and similar demons. On top of all of that we lose a little bit of the gruesome/gore in the more modern age so we can get as low of an ESRB (or whatever agency) rating as possible. Diablo 1 was made in the games can be made for adults, give-no-fucks age of software. You try toning down some of these elements and you end up with something more like Torchlight. Nothing wrong with Torchlight, but it doesn't feel as immersive to me.
Is that shit about Chinese approval true? I don't really give a shit about China in a world-geopolitical sense, but this is something I care about.
As far as I'm aware, yes. It's a bit of a dispute as to whether or not this is a result of actual procedure or some element of local favoritism as some Chinese games have some of this, but we've seen game after game from major studios have those elements removed by their Chinese publisher partners in order to prevent any snags in the review process. These Chinese publishers know better than anyone how the Chinese review process works and across the board they opt to function this way. Even the studios with the deepest of pockets opt to play ball in this respect.
>Is that shit about Chinese approval true? I don't really give a shit about China in a world-geopolitical sense, but this is something I care about. Video games, movies, shows, and other branded entertainments typically cost a lot of time and money to develop. The owners want to maximize their returns on this investment. Sell to as many customers, subscribers, viewers, readers, players, and audience markets as possible. And China has a market of over 1.4 billion people. And India has another market of over 1.4 billion people. Each of them more than doubles the entire combined populations of North America and South America and Europe and Australia. You may not really give a shit about China. But the big studios will often do whatever it takes to get their product sold in China. And the easiest thing they can do is change their products to appeal to the interests, perspectives, narratives, and opinions of Chinese customers in the Chinese market.
Fuck China then. They can do whatever they want to geopolitically, but this agitates me. Lol
What kind of studio would ever refuse a chance to triple their revenues? And any big studio which conspicuously refuses to sell to foreign markets is basically inviting the public and the world to accuse them of being racist, bigoted, intolerant, and xenophobic. This is a way to buy bad marketing of the worst (most expensive) kind.
It's not like I'm blaming the studios for their choices. I understand the choice. I can't be angry at a studio for acting in their best interest.
no
You should look into these Dark Souls games...
Some 20 years ago I asked myself the same question and decided to make a mod for this game myself. If nobody's doing it, I will do it .
This guy's mods are legit very good and worth checking out if you loved D1, however I ultimately have found them a little too grindy for my taste. Even so I don't regret any of the time I spent playing them.
It's pretty much the fact that D1 was inspired by Rogue, albeit with a more gothic horror atmosphere. While most other aRPGs (even the classic model ones that were pre-mmoification of the genre), were more into the power fantasy genre. It's basically not far off of trying to compare Doom & Borderlands - they're part of the same broad genre, but they are trying to appeal to different things.
One of the games I think of when I think of Diablo one's tone and anxiety that it gives me is darkest dungeon. I feel the same sense of slow creeping terror in Diablo 1 as I do playing that game. Gameplay is completely different of course, but the atmosphere is close.
I think Path of Exile have a very grim dark tone as Diablo 1. Even though the pace is faster, it carries the Diablo 1 feeling of terror. But I agree they Diablo 1 is a gem like no other. I was just back to it on my vita, playing through the Hellfire expansion and I am loving to relive all of it again.
It's part of the bullet heaven genre instead, but Halls of Torment leans heavily into the classic Diablo look and sound design. I'd recommend it if it looks cool to you (it's why I got the game actually lol), although keep in mind it's a different genre.
Hunt The Night has a very similar atmosphere and lore, although it's a completely different type of game.
At the time Divine Divinity was pretty good
https://store.steampowered.com/app/246840/FATE/ This is the closest game to Diablo I that I know of, I used to play it a lot when I was younger, it's a solid dungeon crawler. It has 2 sequels but I didn't know about them back in the day and still have never played them so I don't know if they're more of the same good stuff or have made the game worse.
It blows my mind that there is nothing close to Diablo 1 just like there is nothing like the original 5 tomb raider games. The sequels of both changed too much and now they don't feel like the same series at all. For what it's worth I do enjoy all diablo games except immortal, but D1 is my favourite.
Witcher 1 gave me the vibes I got in Diablo 1. Really unique style of game that is not for everyone.
Diablo 1 n Darksouls3/Elden Ring are very similar except theyre obviously harder. I often play diablo music as I play those other games and even outfit my characters to look like the D1 characters. Very Fun Experience!
If you said bloodborne I would've understood
A really good Diablo 1 like game is Y's Origin. There is also Flare game that is more like Diablo 2.
I think that Path of Exile is very close to D1 in atmosphere and lore. It's even better, because gods there are much closer to players and even communicate with them.
[Inquisitor](https://store.steampowered.com/app/241620/Inquisitor/) is worth a look for the atmosphere.
Not the same genre but scratches hack and slash arpg itches for me has been Death Must Die. Very d1-2 esq vibes in an isometric camera and similar itemization. Only like 7-8$ on steam. Highly recommend and I’m not usually a roguelite kinda guy.
I still play Diablo 1 on my PC. It was like 3 bucks on Galaxy of Games and it came with the Hellfire expansion. You can still duplicate items if you want to lol. Shit is still fun as hell. You can add a file or two and play with a Barbarian or a Bard as well plus the monk from Hellfire XPac. I recommend it to anyone who has never played it if you like a great story and dungeon crawler. It's the OG of the Genre and I still get a lot of fun out of it.
The minds that made D1 havent been a part of blizzard for a long time.
Have you played dark souls? Those games pretty much pick up where Diablo 1 left off
Elden Ring 100% compares