12-25-2009, 06:35 PM
Quote:It stands up quite well IMO. It's not perfect, I think the Black Death zombies permanently damaging your HP, along with the Fascinating Ornate Sacred shrines damaging MP stats, are way too harsh. It goes beyond 'punishing' the character to just punishing the player. D2 incorporating an auto click system, something that saves fingers as well as countless mice.
They aren't actually that harsh though... more old school. A newbie who chooses a terrible stat or skill distribution in D2 could put his character at a greater disadvantage in the long term than one who hits every shrine and takes on a few black death. Press and hold attacks would have been a nice feature for sure. I would also add customizable keyboard controls, because the function keys are really not a great place for your most important game controls at all.
Little things about Diablo made it interesting in ways that some of clones don't seem to be. The goat archer who moves at the exact same speed as your warrior and keeps running away as you chase him into the next room and now you have caught the attention of a dozen of his buddies. The cave enemies who have the option of attacking you with spells or running up and mauling you, and how they can use the lava streams or fenced rooms against you (or you against them). Trying to act like a matador when your rogue is facing a charging horned demon. The complete difference in game play between a level 13 with blood knights and cave vipers vs. a level 13 with counselors and snow witches. And let's not forget that first battle with the Butcher!
I guess the bottom line is that a lot of games in this genre seem to be dictated by your choice of skills and the items you come up with. With a good skill progression, most of the common enemies are just blown away as you zip on down to the next uber boss whom you will have to kite for 15 minutes until he dies of poison. It seems like in Diablo, you just had to pay more attention and have more fun battling each enemy along the way (until you got level 8 CL and teleport and started clearing the entire game in 2 minutes, but that's another story!).