Diablo (1997)

 I don't want to call this a failure, but... there is just no other way to explain my experience with Diablo.

But let's back up a bit. Diablo is one of my earliest and fondest memories of computer gaming, sitting behind my mom as she was playing it on our old Mac. So much so I even have a quote from the game as the tagline of my blog! I never really tried it myself but had a lot of fun with Diablo 2 and 3. 

I recall my mom struggling with Diablo, she had to cheese Butcher by shooting him through a grate and eventually managed to save-kill herself my accidentally saving a second before she got swarmed by mobs. Then she moved on to calmer things like The Dig and Myst.

But in the back of my head lingered the feeling of a special relationship with Diablo, one that I would one day go full circle and play it like my mom did back in the day. I soon realized that would only come too true.

So I start it up and roll a warrior. The choices in Diablo are few and simple. That is a welcome sight for an amateur like me that I don't have to know whether I need a half-orc mage-paladin and what stats are best for those, but everything is pretty much ready and set for me. And maybe a bold move for Blizzard at the time when so many were still leaning heavy into the D&D rules. Here all you've got is someone who hits hard, someone who shoots a bow and someone who casts spells. Not much else to think about when getting started. With old games like this I always go for the melee, figuring they are somehow the easy mode with less to keep track off.

The music in Diablo is the kind of music I think could even give people fake nostalgia at this point, but for someone who like me was there for real, with all the extra hipster points, it gives off goosebumps. I think there are few tunes as perfect at conveying the right message and atmosphere from the get-go as the Tristram theme, and it's fortunate it's such an epic tune because you will be hearing it a lot. Definitely up on my top 10 Tunes That Gives Me The Feels-list. Eerie and calm at the same time, few tunes can pull this off. The Save Room Theme from Resident Evil is another one.

The game presents you as a returning citizen of Tristram. The local populace tell you that much evil has happened since you left. The local church has been desecrated and is being used for devilish purposes. They ask you to check it out and maybe also get rid of the local bad boy, The Butcher. You quickly notice that the church is just the very tiny top of a very huge hell-hole iceberg. 

I felt pretty gung-ho about myself as I went down the first set of stairs and came out into a massive crypt. I immediately set out to bash and smash some skeletons and imps jumping around. The permeating soundscape made sure any visitors would know there was nothing good coming from strolling down here, but I was doing quite well. Eventually I leveled up and encountered my first surprise. 

As you level up you get a certain amount of points to set into your stats. Your stats will affect everything from health, mana and what kind of gear you can use. But what I didn't find anywhere was a skill tree. Did the game mean for me to have this one click slash attack for the entirety of the game? Surely not? Reading up on it I find that to learn new skills you have to find book drops throughout the game. So they aren't inherit to the class, but random drops from mobs in the game. I guess it technically means any class can eventually learn any skill, though they will use them with different proficiency, but it does mean that until you find the drops you want and need, you're stuck with what ends up being a pretty repetitive skill set. People might've had the time and patience for this back in the day, but I definitely didn't find it amusing.

The game is a dungeon crawler in every sense. You go further and further down, killing everything you see and hope you get the right drops. In this game I find it to be a huge drawback that the mobs don't respawn, meaning that there is a set amount of experience (and loot) to gain from each level. There is no saving yourself by grinding some extra levels here, and that is usually my go to.

As I ventured further down it didn't take me long to encounter The Butcher's lair. I remembered what it looked like from back in the day, so I didn't get shocked when "FRESH MEAT!" was screamed into my face. I remembered The Butcher being hard, but he absolutely smashed me. I realized I wouldn't stand a chance unless I leveled up quite a bit. In fact, I struggled a lot against some rare mob on the same level and had to kite it several laps before it succumbed. Only for me to receive some half-decent helmet.

See here is the issue I have with Diablo; You always feel like you are one step behind. I am constantly short on money, which means I am short on healing/mana potions and short on gear. Which means I struggle against enemies even in the early game and I never feel like I catch a break.

After hitting my head against skeletons and imps for a while (maybe that's not the way to do it?) I decide to see if I am playing the wrong class. After failing equally hard on the ranger and mage I decide to see if the Hellfire expansion changed some of the things I had trouble with. And it did, it made leveling a little bit easier. The levels seem to be larger, or maybe the enemies give more experience. Either way I was several levels higher than I had been on my "classic" run once I got to Butcher again. Didn't matter much though, I still didn't stand much chance against him.

And that's fine, The Butcher is supposed to be the first boss of the game and it makes sense you need to gear up and level up to beat him. But everything just takes a bit too long. Getting levels, getting skills, getting decent gear. It's too repetitive and not enough... fun.

I had to conclude that my try with Diablo was a bit of a fiasco.

I feel like they fixed a lot of these gripes I have with Diablo in Diablo 2, but maybe I am misremembering that one too? I haven't played it in ~15 years, so maybe it is time to try that one again, and hopefully have a better time.