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Diablo 1 vs Diablo 2

Chris Remo said:
Mainly what irritates me about the "humor" (I use the term loosely) in modern WarCraft is that it's not self-contained like in the early WarCraft games. It's very cheap, easy, break-the-fourth-wall kind of stuff, with lots of stupid puns and cheesy jokes and constant pop culture references. I absolutely can't stand it. It's one of the lowest forms of humor to me, and just screams of laziness and shortcuts. There are a lot of reasons I haven't played WoW since 2005 and have no plans to ever play it again, but that's a big one.

I pretty much agree with every word you said.

The thing that scares me away from WoW the most is that it seems to have become a parody of the franchise. No joke to cheap, nothing to outrageous. I still play WoW from time to time, but the whole atmosphere has become very watered down, like a circus. In 2005 I felt amazed when reaching new areas, but now every single area has its own token funny quest line or character. It's more of a mornig cartoon then an epic adventure.
 
Diablo 2 because my name is in the credits. (Back when Blizzard used to put the beta testers names in.)

I like 2 better seriously. It's the same as 1, just MORE
 
I seem to agree with the consensus here. Diablo 1 had better atmosphere but Diablo 2 is the better game.

"Ahhhh, fresh meat!"
"The warmth of life has entered my tomb. Prepare yourself mortal, to serve my master for eternity!"
And of course, Diablo's bonechilling scream

But the first Diablo had its problems. It was slow and meandering. Enemies would annoyingly run away from you at every opportunity. If you wanted to do single player, you would basically have to restart the game several times to level up enough to progress.

Diablo 2 improves the playability so much that despite the fact the atmosphere wasn't as good, it's the better game by a pretty good margin.
 
Butcher.gif


critch said:
Diablo 2 because my name is in the credits. (Back when Blizzard used to put the beta testers names in.)

Thats pretty damn cool.

ZealousD said:
Enemies would annoyingly run away from you at every opportunity..

Thats why my warrior always had a bow with him too!
 
Diablo II is probably my most played game of all time, but the design of the game is pretty flawed, IMO. Granted, the fact that they decided to go with randomized dungeons didn't help in balance matters, but the progression in acts became more of a pallet swap. On top of that the quests...well they weren't that great. For instance, Act III as a whole is a hassle, and through probably the 30 or so character I played through that game, in some instances on all three difficulties, I went through Act III...0 times. The mass fetch quest just wasn't worth bothering with so I always had friends to rush me through that act.

Hopefully Diablo III improves on the fundamental level and quest design...because we know that the spells/skills and loot whoring will definitely be there.
 
Diablo 1 is much scarier, even now. I re-played it recently and shat my pants before fighting King Leoric. Diablo 2 is not as scary but the combat is orders of magnitude better.
 
I have a hated for Diablo 1 that know's no bounds for one reason: Succubus in hell difficulty.


Fuck them bitches two ways from Sunday. They completely destroyed my enjoyment of that game.
 
I played Diablo for maybe an hour up till I met The Butcher and that was enough for me. However Blizzard write great stories, and even though my brothers loved Diablo II for what it was, I always made sure to "hang around" and check out the CG movies.

The greatest thing though is the advent of a fan-created wiki which details the history of the series and delves into the lore, especially with something that is a Blizzard IP. Criticism towards WoW's quest writing structure withstanding, there's a reason why I cherish wowwiki.com and blizzplanet.com because they cut away the fat and let the lore flourish.
 
ZealousD said:
But the first Diablo had its problems. It was slow and meandering. Enemies would annoyingly run away from you at every opportunity. If you wanted to do single player, you would basically have to restart the game several times to level up enough to progress.

n.
Okay.. What?

The only enemies which really run from you are Fallen Ones and that is only if one is killed in the vicinity. Hiddens moreso "move around" and projectile enemies, of course, move when you approach!

Further, how do you figure that you have to "basically restart the game several times" to get to a level adequate to progress? That makes little sense, you can't be describing Diablo. You generally end up over leveled initially and perfectly leveled later in the end game.
 
Mashing said:
I have a hated for Diablo 1 that know's no bounds for one reason: Succubus in hell difficulty.


Fuck them bitches two ways from Sunday. They completely destroyed my enjoyment of that game.

Even worse when you meet a unique squad of them. It's almost like you die with one hit if you're stupid enough to run straight at them.
 
Kureishima said:
The only enemies which really run from you are Fallen Ones and that is only if one is killed in the vicinity. Hiddens moreso "move around" and projectile enemies, of course, move when you approach!

You don't remember Diablo very well. Nearly any enemy that uses projectile attacks in the catacombs, caves, or hell tries to run away if you ever get close. Satyrs and Succubi in particular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_gJlWlxXs

Further, how do you figure that you have to "basically restart the game several times" to get to a level adequate to progress? That makes little sense, you can't be describing Diablo. You generally end up over leveled initially and perfectly leveled later in the end game.

Maybe it's just me, but playing as a warrior I'd always hit the first wall at some point in the catacombs, and I'd have to restart the game to level up some more since all the previous monsters are cleared out. The second wall would usually end up in the caves because of those damn poison spitters.
 
Kureishima said:
Diablo III had my hopes high - I dreamed of a return to the focused and darker style of Diablo with the expansive elements of Diablo II. And while it will turn out to be fun and likely a great addition, unfortunately it looks uglier than ever. I prefer the older, 2D style. Instead we get ugly and rounded designs a la Warcraft III or WoW. That look does not suit Diablo in the least.

In closing, a gigantic Diablo fan whom definitely prefers the first, but looks forward to the third with reservation.

I think it's just the engine though that makes it look like it, yeah it looks lighter but I have faith in Blizzard plus Diablo 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games.

plus we have only seen a little bit of Diablo 3, so it's gonna be interesting to see how it turns out.
 
The cleaver guy on floor 3 in Diablo 1 always scared the shit out of me. I had a hard time beating him. I'd usually progress until like floor 5, then go back to floor 3 and beat him.
 
I liked the setting of Diablo I better, set in one area and keep going down, etc. Wasn't a fan of the change to multiple settings, felt kinda disjointed. Diablo II was the better "game" for sure though.
 
Kosma said:
So whats the consensus on the expansion packs?
Never played Diablo 1's expansion

Diablo 2 though I just did Baal/Pindleskin runs pretty much. Although I have to say the champions you fight on top of the mountain was amazing. My favorite part of the expansion.
 
tahrikmili said:
Just wait for Diablo 3. I swear.

What is this some kind of insider info or are you just messing with us? Nothing so far indicates D3 will be a return to D1.

Cat in the Hat said:
Never played Diablo 1's expansion

It had a monk as a new class. Which imho didnt fit in at all. The whol expansion seemed less well executed, maybe because it was made by Sierra.
 
I didn't really like Diablo 1. It got boring quick for me. No real differences between the characters and only 1 (big) dungeon.
 
Chris Remo said:
Also, people don't really talk about this, but the narrative structure in Diablo 2 is brilliant to me. Telling a parallel, time-shifted story that covers the same geographical ground you do, while being about a different character, is inspired and covers numerous issues simultaneously: conveying a story that is relevant but not necessary to understand your character's specific plot, tying in the events of the first game without requiring knowledge of it, removing any real direct disparity between how specific characters are portrayed in-engine and in cutscenes, providing a really clean overall narrative metaphor for a traditional video game hub-based structure, etc.

It is something I talk about when mentioning Diablo 2, or video game stories in general. It is so well done on so many levels. The story of Marius is really short but tragic and foreboding. You really want to know what will happen to him next. And that combined with all the story snippets you gather from interaction with the NPC's makes it well rounded and gives you a very good understanding of the Diablo universe.

It's also the reason why I don't much care for the Diablo 2 expansion. It has a few nice additions, but the story is really lacking.
 
While I'd like to say Diablo 2 is universally better, it does have Act 3. Diablo 1 didn't have anything that shitty.
 
Diablo 2 was the better game overall but its single player was basically broken, which is why I still prefer the original.
Pimpbaa said:
I didn't really like Diablo 1. It got boring quick for me. No real differences between the characters and only 1 (big) dungeon.
wat
 
coamithra said:
Lovely comparison between the two (and some starcraft thrown in) at The Action Button Dot Net. (link)

Man thats a looooooong read. And written on drugs?

But this is about Diablo II, and we need to say the whys and the wherefores of beatings and love. Generally, when we dislike something, our urge is to disengage immediately. This is why we didn’t play Ico past the first forty minutes (don’t look at us like that — if we’re going to have fantasies about saving a foreign woman from certain doom, we want those fantasies to not make us look like an underage minotaur with lukemia fighting shadows with a stick; I also want “calling her to my location so that she stands next to me” to have roughly the same game effect on magical bullshit as”‘holding her hand” (the ham-fisted metaphor here for holding hands as being a fantasy form of intimacy only makes sense if the woman isn’t a pale spectre (and on the subject of holding hands, if you’re holding someone’s hand, it’s because you don’t trust them, and you intend to grip some part of their body, because you figure they probably wouldn’t accept wearing a leash)). So, then, to truly render something into paste with hatred, it has to possess a strange ability to make us love it and give nothing back. Like the illegitimate child in The Count of Monte Cristo who was buried in a box in the back yard at birth (on the assumption that he was dead because he was blue and also wasn’t breathing — and they didn’t have incubators in those days), adopting it will ultimately destroy you. This thing doesn’t understand love, and doesn’t want it, and you are a fool to think otherwise.

:lol

Holy shit these guys are mental

Starcraft is the sound of one hand clapping in a room full of fallen trees (or some other clever sounding statements which are complete bullshit). The fact that people pursue these unfeeling experiences of clinical victory is totally okay (this originally read “nightmarish” — but I have a beer in my hand, now, while I’m revising).
 
I loved Diablo when I played it. Atmosphere coming out the ass. The music was awesome all over, everything felt like it was a persistent and cohesive world. I also loved the smaller side characters, like Farnam when he spoke of the Butcher. Very chilling, but then again I was 11 when I played it.

Quotes y'all!

Diablo 2 was great too, but a very different game from what I appreciated about the first.
 
What can you do when creating a sequel to a great game? You can expansion pack-ify it, or you can do what Blizzard North did: make Diablo II. DII improved upon the gameplay of DI by leaps and bounds. I have always said that gameplay is paramount. However, what about the intangibles? DI had great horror elements, atmosphere and backstory. How do you improve upon these elements and the gameplay without diluting the former? What BN did was transform DI, which was an atmospheric and claustrophic game, into the epic game that became DII. DI only had one town, and arguably, one dungeon. I'm not saying that it was a bad thing. It worked perfectly for the game; but for a sequel, people would want more. They added more towns, more NPCs, more dungeons, dungeons within dungeons, etc. Did DI have more atmosphere than DII? It is certainly so. But give DII some credit in that area. Each Act had a subplot, in addition to being part of the main plot. Overall, BN did a great job of rewarding the player - with loot, sub-bosses, and bosses. I was never bored of an Act and think, "God damn it, I wish I could kill Diablo already."

In the end, my conclusion is that DI and DII are incomparable. DI came before DII and putting them under the same microscope is not fair. Both are great games, with DII possessing the greatest gameplay in the action/RPG genre, and DI possessing that unique gothic/pseudo-middle-ages-Christian/medieval atmosphere.
 
I agree with Kosma 100%. Diablo 1 felt scarier, but maybe because I was younger.
 
I love D2. I can't even recall the insane amount of hours I put into that game on BNet. I used to wake up insanely early and go to bed insanely late to maximize my playtime =/

The best memories I've had were from when my and my friends experimented with duping and all that. We eventually decked our characters out with a shit-ton of bugged items. Not very noble, but goddamn, it was fun. Then Blizzard wiped our characters, ha!

I never played through D1 entirely though. I played it after I finished D2, but D1 never clicked with me. I remember getting frustrated pretty damn quick, one of the reasons was the lack of running.
 
It's a difficult comparison. Personally I'd incline towards calling Diablo the better singleplayer game, and Diablo 2 the better multiplayer. In the first game the way the story was presented seemed more traditional, whereas Diablo 2 it was just there to be ignored in favour of loot-whoring with your friends.
 
As someone who started with 2, going to 1 was almost an unplayable experience. The rest of you have nostalgia glasses.
 
Cat in the Hat said:
Has anyone here ever found a SoJ? My entire time I played with all my thousands of MF runs I never found a 1 single SoJ.

Before I quit (for the 1000th time), I found about 4 or 5 of them in about a week. Hell Andariel, as well as the chests in the area seemed to be the good spots ;)
 
nincompoop said:
Diablo 2 was the better game overall but its single player was basically broken, which is why I still prefer the original.

wat
He means that there is no differences between the classes other than the starting stats. They can all do exactly the same thing.

Unlike Diablo 2 where each class is unqiue with different skills.
 
I think i'm going to play Diablo 1 now.

Its been in my drawer untouched since I bought the battlechest oh so many years ago.
 
Somnid said:
As someone who started with 2, going to 1 was almost an unplayable experience. The rest of you have nostalgia glasses.
I don't think so. People in this thread have been pretty specific about the things they think are better in each game.
 
Diablo 1 is my hands-down most played game of all time, and I just couldn't get into D2 no matter how I tried. For many that was the first game though, so I respect it for sure.

To this day though nothing beats the one town, one shop for each need, simple equip management, belt, music, and kill/loot/sell/repeat feel. So awesome. I play that game almost as much as SOTN. I'd love it on iPhone or DS (if it could be done well. Yikes PSX version). Man...
 
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